Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Fiske, Minnie

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

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

Pacino, Al

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

Shaw, George Bernard

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

Johnson, Alva

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

Marceau, Marcel

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

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

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

Chaplin, Charlie

10.

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

Hazlitt, William

11.

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

12.

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

Forrest, Edwin

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

16.

If you have to be in a soap opera try not to get the worst role.

George, Boy

17.

Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.

Johnson, Samuel

18.

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

Shearer, Norma

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Irons, Jeremy

22.

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

23.

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

Field, Eugene

24.

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

Carrey, Jim

25.

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

26.

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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.

30.

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

Byron, Lord

31.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

32.

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

33.

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

Baldwin, Alec

34.

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

Barthes, Roland

35.

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

36.

Such is an actor's life. We must ride the waves of every film, barfing occasionally, yet maintain our dignity, even as the bulk of our Herculean efforts are keel-hauled before our very eyes. [On filming MacHale's Navy]

Campbell, Bruce

37.

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

Garland, Judy

38.

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

Hitchcock, Alfred

39.

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

Sinden, Donald

40.

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

Cusack, John

41.

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

John, Elton

42.

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

43.

In civilized life, where the happiness and indeed almost the existence of man, depends on the opinion of his fellow men. He is constantly acting a studied part.

Irving, Washington

44.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

45.

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

Quinn, Anthony

46.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

47.

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

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

Spacey, Kevin

50.

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