Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Garland, Judy

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

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

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

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

Wood, Elijah

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

Welles, Orson

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

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

Glass, George

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

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

10.

Acting deals with very delicate emotions. It is not putting up a mask. Each time an actor acts he does not hide; he exposes himself.

Moreau, Jeanne

11.

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.

12.

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

Hitchcock, Alfred

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Hannah, Daryl

18.

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

19.

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

Goldblum, Jeff

20.

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

21.

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

Byron, Lord

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Cusack, John

27.

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

28.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

29.

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

30.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

31.

First of all, I choose the great [roles], and if none of these come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don't come, I choose the ones that pay the rent.

Caine, Michael

32.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

33.

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

Diderot, Denis

34.

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

Spacey, Kevin

35.

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

Newman, Paul

36.

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)

37.

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

John, Elton

38.

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

39.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

40.

It's a business you go into because you're an egocentric. It's a very embarrassing profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

41.

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

Moreau, Jeanne

42.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

43.

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

44.

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

Duras, Marguerite

45.

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

46.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

47.

The real actor has a direct line to the collective heart.

Davis, Bette

48.

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

Shearer, Norma

49.

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

50.

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