Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

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

I'm an actor. And I guess I've done so many movies I've achieved some high visibility. But a star? I guess I still think of myself as kind of a worker ant.

Whitaker, Forest

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

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

Glass, George

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

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

Goldblum, Jeff

First of all, I choose the great [roles], and if none of these come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don't come, I choose the ones that pay the rent.

Caine, Michael

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

Howard, Ron

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

10.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

11.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Fonda, Jane

15.

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

Spacey, Kevin

16.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

17.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

18.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

19.

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

20.

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

Sinden, Donald

21.

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

Fiske, Minnie

22.

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

23.

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

Richardson, Miranda

24.

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

Python, Monty

25.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

26.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

27.

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

28.

When I was a fireman I was in a lot of burning buildings. It was a great job, the only job I ever had that compares with the thrill of acting. Before going into a fire, there's the same surge of adrenaline you get just before the camera rolls.

Buscemi, Steve

29.

Acting doesn't bring anything to a text. On the contrary, it detracts from it.

Duras, Marguerite

30.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

35.

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.

36.

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

37.

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

Garland, Judy

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Hazlitt, William

41.

Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic art is in no sense cathartic; it is merely a form of emotional masturbation. It is the rarest thing to find a player who has not had his character affected for the worse by the practice of his profession. Nobody can make a habit of self-exhibition, nobody can exploit his personality for the sake of exercising a kind of hypnotic power over others, and remain untouched by the process.

Huxley, Aldous

42.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

43.

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

44.

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

Wood, Elijah

45.

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

46.

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

Davis, Bette

47.

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

48.

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

49.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

50.

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

Hepburn, Katharine