Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Close, Glenn

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

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

Hazlitt, William

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

I never said all actors are cattle, what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.

Hitchcock, Alfred

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.

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

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

Close, Glenn

To see him act is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

10.

The thing about performance, even if it's only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities.

Lewis, Daniel Day

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Chaplin, Charlie

14.

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

Half, Robert

15.

The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful -- my personal life suffers.

Pacino, Al

16.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

17.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

18.

Celebrity is death --- celebrity -- that's the worst thing that can happen to an actor.

Cusack, John

19.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

20.

You know how in high school you do these plays and people come up after the show and they're really excited for you? Well, that's what's happening to me right now.

Sorvino, Mira

21.

She represents the un-vowed aspiration of the male human being, his potential infidelity -- and infidelity of a very special kind, which would lead him to the opposite of his wife, to the woman of wax whom he could model at will, make and unmake in any way he wished, even unto death.

Duras, Marguerite

22.

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

23.

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

24.

Talk to them about things they don't know. Try to give them an inferiority complex. If the actress is beautiful, screw her. If she isn't, present her with a valuable painting she will not understand. If they insist on being boring, kick their asses or twist their noses. And that's about all there is to it.

Huston, John

25.

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

Sinden, Donald

26.

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

27.

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

Marceau, Marcel

28.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

29.

Actors often behave like children, and so we're taken for children. I want to be grown up.

Irons, Jeremy

30.

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

Fiske, Minnie

31.

I think I am a much better actor than I have allowed myself to be.

Spacey, Kevin

32.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

33.

I don't want to read about some of these actresses who are around today. They sound like my niece in Scarsdale. I love my niece in Scarsdale, but I won't buy tickets to see her act.

Price, Vincent

34.

Imagination, industry, and intelligence -- the three I s -- are all indispensable to the actress, but of these three the greatest is, without doubt, imagination.

Terry, Ellen

35.

Remember: there are no small parts, only small actors.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

36.

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

37.

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

Shearer, Norma

38.

Unless the theatre can ennoble you, make you a better person, you should flee from it.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

39.

Mr. Clarke played the King all evening as though under constant fear that someone else was about to play the Ace.

Field, Eugene

40.

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.

Wilder, Thornton

41.

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

42.

The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn an Event.

Barthes, Roland

43.

I can't tell you how many shows I've done with full-blown migraine headaches.

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

44.

Acting deals with very delicate emotions. It is not putting up a mask. Each time an actor acts he does not hide; he exposes himself.

Moreau, Jeanne

45.

The actor searches vainly for the sound of a vanished tradition, and critic and audience follow suit. We have lost all sense of ritual and ceremony -- whether it be connected with Christmas, birthdays or funerals -- but the words remain with us and old impulses stir in the marrow. We feel we should have rituals, we should do something about getting them and we blame the artists for not finding them for us. So the artist sometimes attempts to find new rituals with only his imagination as his source: he imitates the outer form of ceremonies, pagan or baroque, unfortunately adding his own trapping -- the result is rarely convincing. And after the years and years of weaker and waterier imitations we now find ourselves rejecting the very notion of a holy stage. It is not the fault of the holy that it has become a middle-class weapon to keep the children good.

Brook, Peter (Stephen Paul)

46.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

47.

The most minor gifts and not a very high class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four.

Hepburn, Katharine

48.

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

Welles, Orson

49.

If a farmer fills his barn with grain, he gets mice. If he leaves it empty, he gets actors.