Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

- Fonda, Jane

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

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

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

Glass, George

Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.

Goldblum, Jeff

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

Hazlitt, William

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

Johnson, Alva

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

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

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

13.

The thing about performance, even if it's only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities.

Lewis, Daniel Day

14.

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

Howard, Ron

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.

Hagen, Uta

20.

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

21.

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

25.

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

Field, Eugene

26.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

27.

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

28.

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

Python, Monty

29.

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

Duras, Marguerite

30.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

31.

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

John, Elton

32.

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

Chaplin, Charlie

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

38.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

39.

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

40.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

41.

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

Newman, Paul

42.

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

43.

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

Vaughan, Bill

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Cusack, John

47.

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

Sinden, Donald

48.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

49.

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.

50.

I was sitting in the looping studio late one night, and I had this epiphany that they weren't paying me for my acting, for God's sake, but to own me. And from then on, it became clear and an awful lot easier to deal with.

Lawless, Lucy