Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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.

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

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

Carrey, Jim

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

Duras, Marguerite

If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.

Hepburn, Katharine

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

Richardson, Miranda

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

Leoni, Tea

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

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

Hannah, Daryl

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.

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

Field, Eugene

12.

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

Welles, Orson

13.

A man who strains himself on the stage is bound, if he is any good, to strain all the people sitting in the stalls.

Brecht, Bertolt

14.

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

15.

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

16.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

17.

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

Spacey, Kevin

18.

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

19.

The mug is a tool. My ace in the hole. To have looks is the bonus on top of what motivates me to be an actor. Not to realize they're an asset would be counterproductive to the cause; they serve the common good.

Zane, Billy

20.

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)

21.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

22.

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

23.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

24.

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

25.

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

Moreau, Jeanne

26.

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

Lansbury, Angela

27.

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

Diderot, Denis

28.

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

29.

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

Pacino, Al

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.

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

32.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

33.

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

Chaplin, Charlie

34.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

35.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

36.

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

Fiske, Minnie

37.

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

Marceau, Marcel

38.

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

Cusack, John

39.

Somebody told me I should put a pebble in my mouth to cure my stuttering. Well, I tried it, and during a scene I swallowed the pebble. That was the end of that.

Davies, Marion

40.

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

Python, Monty

41.

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

Sinden, Donald

42.

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

Shearer, Norma

43.

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

50.

The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in their profession that the less socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.

Auden, W. H.