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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don't do T & A very well because I haven't got much of either.

Leoni, Tea

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

Hazlitt, William

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

10.

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

11.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

12.

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

Forrest, Edwin

13.

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

14.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

15.

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

16.

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

Irons, Jeremy

17.

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

Fiske, Minnie

18.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

19.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

20.

People say I'm cocky, but am I supposed to sit here and be insecure and not know where my future's going or not realize that moviemaking is the greatest thing to happen to me?

Lewis, Juliette

21.

Every time I get a script it's a matter of trying to know what I could do with it. I see colors, imagery. It has to have a smell. It's like falling in love. You can't give a reason why.

Olin, Lena

22.

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

Davis, Bette

23.

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

Byron, Lord

24.

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

Spacey, Kevin

25.

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

Vaughan, Bill

26.

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

27.

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

Marceau, Marcel

28.

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

29.

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

30.

I don't get acting jobs because of my looks.

Baldwin, Alec

31.

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

32.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

33.

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

Carrey, Jim

34.

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

Pacino, Al

35.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

36.

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

37.

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

Richardson, Miranda

38.

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

39.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

40.

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

Fonda, Jane

41.

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

42.

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

43.

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

44.

I think every American actor wants to be a movie star. But I never wanted to do stupid movies, I wanted to do films. I vowed I would never do a commercial, nor would I do a soap opera -- both of which I did as soon as I left the [Acting] Company and was starving.

Kline, Kevin

45.

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

Barthes, Roland

46.

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

Wood, Elijah

47.

Duras, Marguerite

48.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor