Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting.

- Chaplin, Charlie

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

I really think that effective acting has to do literally with the movement of molecules.

Close, Glenn

I don't think there's a punch-line scheduled, is there?

Python, Monty

Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that's printed about him.

Welles, Orson

There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.

Tracy, Spencer

Acting is not about dressing up. Acting is about stripping bare. The whole essence of learning lines is to forget them so you can make them sound like you thought of them that instant.

Jackson, Glenda

An actor who knows his business ought to be able to make the London telephone directory sound enthralling.

Sinden, Donald

If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.

Hepburn, Katharine

Remember this practical piece of advice: Never come into the theatre with mud on your feet. Leave your dust and dirt outside. Check your little worries, squabbles, petty difficulties with your outside clothing -- all the things that ruin your life and draw your attention away from your art -- at the door.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

We become actors without realizing it, and actors without wanting to.

Amiel, Henri Frederic

10.

Insecurity, commonly regarded as a weakness in normal people, is the basic tool of the actor's trade.

Richardson, Miranda

11.

Actors are loved because they are unoriginal. Actors stick to their script. The unoriginal man is loved by the mediocrity because this kind of artistic expression is something to which the merest five-eighth can climb.

Kavanagh, Patrick

12.

The hardest part has been maintaining a small head--remaining down to earth. So many people try to make you more than you are. This business has changed a lot of good people and a lot of good families, and I don't want that to happen to me.

Brandy

13.

I'm not an actress who can create a character. I play me.

Moore, Mary Tyler

14.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

15.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

16.

If you have to be in a soap opera try not to get the worst role.

George, Boy

17.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

18.

You can't do four movies and be good to everybody and be flying all night and shooting all day with a different wig and then be going to sing on Broadway without feeling a little tired. You endlessly feel you're letting somebody down.

Parker, Sarah Jessica

19.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

20.

You don't merely give over your creativity to making a film -- you give over your life! In theatre, by contrast, you live these two rather strange lives simultaneously; you have no option but to confront the mould on last night's washing-up.

Lewis, Daniel Day

21.

I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don't remember ever having seen one weep.

Diderot, Denis

22.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

23.

Show me a great actor and I'll show you a lousy husband. Show me a great actress, and you've seen the devil.

Fields, W. C.

24.

They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.

Hazlitt, William

25.

I'm not handsome in the classical sense. The eyes droop, the mouth is crooked, the teeth aren't straight, the voice sounds like a Mafioso pallbearer, but somehow it all works.

Stallone, Sylvester

26.

I have spent more than half a lifetime trying to express the tragic moment.

Marceau, Marcel

27.

For an actress to be a success, she must have the face of Venus, the brains of a Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of a Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros.

Barrymore, Ethel

28.

I don't get acting jobs because of my looks.

Baldwin, Alec

29.

I want to do a musical movie. Like Evita, but with good music.

John, Elton

30.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

31.

If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent.

Wood, Elijah

32.

Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.

Johnson, Samuel

33.

I just stopped playing bitches on wheels and peoples' mothers. I have only a few more years to kick up my heels!

Lansbury, Angela

34.

In Europe an actor is an artist. In Hollywood, if he isn't working, he's a bum.

Quinn, Anthony

35.

Until Ace Ventura, no actor had considered talking through his ass.

Carrey, Jim

36.

Every time I get a script it's a matter of trying to know what I could do with it. I see colors, imagery. It has to have a smell. It's like falling in love. You can't give a reason why.

Olin, Lena

37.

To grasp the full significance of life is the actor's duty, to interpret it is his problem, and to express it his dedication.

Brando, Marlon

38.

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you -- tripping on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as Leif the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say, the whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.

Shakespeare, William

39.

Do not try to push your way through to the front ranks of your profession; do not run after distinctions and rewards; but do your utmost to find an entry into the world of beauty.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

40.

I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead. [On his college registration experience]

Selleck, Tom

41.

Acting on a good idea is better than just having a good idea.

Half, Robert

42.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

43.

Acting provides the fulfillment of never being fulfilled. You're never as good as you'd like to be. So there's always something to hope for.

Jackson, Glenda

44.

We are born at the rise of the curtain and we die with its fall, and every night in the presence of our patrons we write our new creation, and every night it is blotted out forever; and of what use is it to say to audience or to critic, Ah, but you should have seen me last Tuesday?

Macliammoir, Micheal

45.

An actress must never lose her ego--without it she has no talent.

Shearer, Norma

46.

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

47.

The main factor in any form of creativeness is the life of a human spirit, that of the actor and his part, their joint feelings and subconscious creation.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

48.

I was sitting in the looping studio late one night, and I had this epiphany that they weren't paying me for my acting, for God's sake, but to own me. And from then on, it became clear and an awful lot easier to deal with.

Lawless, Lucy

49.

The great actors are the luminous ones. They are the great conductors of the stage.

Fiske, Minnie

50.

More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.

Hagen, Uta