Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Diderot, Denis

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

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

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

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

A true priest is aware of the presence of the altar during every moment that he is conducting a service. It is exactly the same way that a true artist should react to the stage all the time he is in the theater. An actor who is incapable of this feeling will never be a true artist.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

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

Cusack, John

The mere mechanical technique of acting can be taught, but the spirit that is to give life to lifeless forms must be born in a man. No dramatic college can teach its pupils to think or to feel. It is Nature who makes our artists for us, though it may be Art who taught them their right mode of expression.

Wilde, Oscar

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

Diderot, Denis

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

10.

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

11.

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

Marceau, Marcel

12.

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

Chaplin, Charlie

13.

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

14.

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

Python, Monty

15.

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)

16.

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

Half, Robert

17.

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

Close, Glenn

18.

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

Lansbury, Angela

19.

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

20.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

Shaw, George Bernard

21.

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

Spacey, Kevin

22.

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

23.

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

John, Elton

24.

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

25.

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

Welles, Orson

26.

After Blood Simple, everybody thought I was from Texas. After Mississippi Burning, everybody thought I was from Mississippi and uneducated. After Fargo, everybody's going to think I'm from Minnesota, pregnant, and have blonde hair. I don't think you can ever completely transform yourself on film, but if you do your job well, you can make people believe that you're the character you're trying to be.

McDormand, Frances

27.

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

Hazlitt, William

28.

They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. We see ourselves at second-hand in them: they show us all that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be. What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as they imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them. There is no class of society whom so many persons regard with affection as actors.

Hazlitt, William

29.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

30.

It's a business you go into because you're an egocentric. It's a very embarrassing profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

31.

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

32.

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

33.

Stage charm guarantees in advance an actor's hold on the audience, it helps him to carry over to large numbers of people his creative purposes. It enhances his roles and his art. Yet it is of utmost importance that he use this precious gift with prudence, wisdom, and modesty. It is a great shame when he does not realize this and goes on to exploit, to play on his ability to charm.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

34.

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

35.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

36.

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

Wood, Elijah

37.

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

38.

An actor is a guy who, if you ain't talking about him, he ain't listening.

Glass, George

39.

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

Garland, Judy

40.

Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.

Newman, Paul

41.

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

Carrey, Jim

42.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

43.

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

Byron, Lord

44.

A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar-- you pretend it's not there.

Hannah, Daryl

45.

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

46.

Oh! it offends me to the soul to hear a robust periwig-pated fellow, tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings.

Shakespeare, William

47.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

48.

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

49.

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

Hitchcock, Alfred

50.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor