Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

Mr. Clarke played the King all evening as though under constant fear that someone else was about to play the Ace.

- Field, Eugene

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

An actress must never lose her ego--without it she has no talent.

Shearer, Norma

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

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

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

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

Newman, Paul

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

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

Irons, Jeremy

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

Close, Glenn

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

Cusack, John

10.

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

11.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

12.

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

Python, Monty

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.

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

15.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Duras, Marguerite

19.

For an actress to be a success, she must have the face of Venus, the brains of a Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of a Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros.

Barrymore, Ethel

20.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

21.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

22.

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

Fiske, Minnie

23.

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

Leoni, Tea

24.

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

Pacino, Al

25.

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

Quinn, Anthony

26.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

27.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

28.

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

Fonda, Jane

29.

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

Baldwin, Alec

30.

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

31.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

32.

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

Barthes, Roland

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.

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

35.

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

36.

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

Diderot, Denis

37.

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

38.

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

Forrest, Edwin

39.

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

40.

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

41.

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

42.

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

43.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

44.

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

45.

Mr. Clarke played the King all evening as though under constant fear that someone else was about to play the Ace.

Field, Eugene

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Howard, Ron

49.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

50.

I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead. [On his college registration experience]

Selleck, Tom