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

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

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

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

Irons, Jeremy

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

Field, Eugene

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

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

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

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

10.

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

Cusack, John

11.

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

Spacey, Kevin

12.

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

13.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

14.

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

Baldwin, Alec

15.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

16.

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

Sinden, Donald

17.

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

Richardson, Miranda

18.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

19.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

20.

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

Close, Glenn

21.

I don't want to read about some of these actresses who are around today. They sound like my niece in Scarsdale. I love my niece in Scarsdale, but I won't buy tickets to see her act.

Price, Vincent

22.

Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life. The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis.

Brando, Marlon

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Newman, Paul

26.

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

Goldblum, Jeff

27.

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

Chaplin, Charlie

28.

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

29.

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

Marceau, Marcel

30.

For the theatre one needs long arms; it is better to have them too long than too short. An artiste with short arms can never, never make a fine gesture.

Bernhardt, Sarah

31.

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

Carrey, Jim

32.

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

Welles, Orson

33.

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

Glass, George

34.

You name it and I've done it. I'd like to say I did it my way. But that line, I'm afraid, belongs to someone else.

Davis Jr., Sammy

35.

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

Johnson, Alva

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

This is not a tough job. You read a script. If you like the part and the money is O.K., you do it. Then you remember your lines. You show up on time. You do what the director tells you to do. When you finish, you rest and then go on to the next part. That's it.

Mitchum, Robert

40.

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

41.

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.

42.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

47.

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

48.

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

Half, Robert

49.

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

Hannah, Daryl

50.

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