Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Cusack, John

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

Such is an actor's life. We must ride the waves of every film, barfing occasionally, yet maintain our dignity, even as the bulk of our Herculean efforts are keel-hauled before our very eyes. [On filming MacHale's Navy]

Campbell, Bruce

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

Pacino, Al

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

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

Irons, Jeremy

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

Barthes, Roland

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

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

For the theatre one needs long arms; it is better to have them too long than too short. An artiste with short arms can never, never make a fine gesture.

Bernhardt, Sarah

10.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

11.

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)

12.

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

13.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

14.

The real actor has a direct line to the collective heart.

Davis, Bette

15.

I'm an assistant storyteller. It's like being a waiter or a gas-station attendant, but I'm waiting on six million people a week, if I'm lucky. [On being an actor]

Ford, Harrison

16.

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

Cusack, John

17.

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

18.

The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays that part.

Cervantes, Miguel De

19.

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

20.

I mean, the question actors most often get asked is how they can bear saying the same things over and over again, night after night, but God knows the answer to that is, don't we all anyway; might as well get paid for it.

Dundy, Elaine

21.

I am acquainted with no immaterial sensuality so delightful as good acting.

Byron, Lord

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 have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

24.

I have tried to be as eclectic as I possibly can with my professional life, and so far it's been pretty fun.

Hunter, Holly

25.

One forgets too easily the difference between a man and his image, and that there is none between the sound of his voice on the screen and in real life.

Bresson, Robert

26.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

27.

I was born at the age of twelve on a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot.

Garland, Judy

28.

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

29.

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.

30.

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

Welles, Orson

31.

You spend all your life trying to do something they put people in asylums for.

Fonda, Jane

32.

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

John, Elton

33.

It's not a field, I think, for people who need to have success every day: if you can't live with a nightly sort of disaster, you should get out. I wouldn't describe myself as lacking in confidence, but I would just say that the ghosts you chase you never catch.

Malkovich, John

34.

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

Carrey, Jim

35.

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

36.

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

37.

Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.

Goldblum, Jeff

38.

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

39.

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

Wood, Elijah

40.

Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life. The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis.

Brando, Marlon

41.

I'd prefer not to be the pretty thing in a film. It's such a bloody responsibility to look cute, because people know when you don't and they're like, They're trying to pass her off as the cute girl and she's looking like a bedraggled sack of potatoes.

Driver, Minnie

42.

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

43.

You reach a point where you say you're not going to do juveniles any longer.

Howard, Ron

44.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

45.

An agent is a person who is sore because an actor gets 90% of what they make.

Johnson, Alva

46.

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

47.

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

48.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

49.

Actors ought to be larger than life. You come across quite enough ordinary, nondescript people in daily life and I don't see why you should be subjected to them on the stage too.

Sinden, Donald

50.

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