Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

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

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

Some people are addicts. If they don't act, they don't exist.

Moreau, Jeanne

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

Hazlitt, William

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

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

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

From '86 until the summer of last year, wherever I went, people would say, You would have made a great James Bond! Weren't you going to be James Bond? You should have been, you could have been, you may have been. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It was like unfinished business in my life. I couldn't say no to it this time around.

Brosnan, Pierce

10.

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

11.

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

12.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

13.

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

14.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

15.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

16.

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.

17.

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

18.

I'm disappointed in acting as a craft. I want everything to go back to Orson Welles and fake noses and changing your voice. It's become so much about personality.

Ulrich, Skeet

19.

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

20.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

21.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

22.

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

Irons, Jeremy

23.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

24.

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

Davis, Bette

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Quinn, Anthony

28.

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

John, Elton

29.

The actor's popularity is evanescent; applauded today, forgotten tomorrow.

Forrest, Edwin

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Welles, Orson

33.

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

34.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

35.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

36.

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

37.

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

Hitchcock, Alfred

38.

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

Hannah, Daryl

39.

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

40.

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

Carrey, Jim

41.

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

42.

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

Johnson, Alva

43.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

44.

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

45.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

46.

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

47.

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

Marceau, Marcel

48.

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

49.

The popularity of that baby-faced boy, who possessed not even the elements of a good actor, was a hallucination in the public mind, and a disgrace to our theatrical history.

Campbell, Thomas

50.

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