Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

- Fonda, Henry

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

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

Cusack, John

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

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

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

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

Some scenes you juggle two balls, some scenes you juggle three balls, some scenes you can juggle five balls. The key is always to speak in your own voice. Speak the truth. That's Acting 101. Then you start putting layers on top of that. [On his acting techniques]

D'Onofrio, Vincent

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

Wood, Elijah

10.

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

Marceau, Marcel

11.

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

Newman, Paul

12.

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

Garland, Judy

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Vaughan, Bill

16.

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

Diderot, Denis

17.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

18.

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

19.

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

Python, Monty

20.

Acting on a good idea is better than just having a good idea.

Half, Robert

21.

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

Moreau, Jeanne

22.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

23.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

24.

An actor is a guy who, if you ain't talking about him, he ain't listening.

Glass, George

25.

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

26.

Stage charm guarantees in advance an actor's hold on the audience, it helps him to carry over to large numbers of people his creative purposes. It enhances his roles and his art. Yet it is of utmost importance that he use this precious gift with prudence, wisdom, and modesty. It is a great shame when he does not realize this and goes on to exploit, to play on his ability to charm.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

27.

The main factor in any form of creativeness is the life of a human spirit, that of the actor and his part, their joint feelings and subconscious creation.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

28.

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

Lansbury, Angela

29.

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

30.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

31.

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

32.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

33.

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

34.

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

35.

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

Duras, Marguerite

36.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

37.

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

Forrest, Edwin

38.

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

Spacey, Kevin

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Chaplin, Charlie

42.

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

Close, Glenn

43.

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

44.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

45.

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

Hannah, Daryl

46.

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

Quinn, Anthony

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.

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

Fiske, Minnie

49.

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

50.

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