Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Goldblum, Jeff

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

Field, Eugene

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

Carrey, Jim

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

Howard, Ron

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

Hepburn, Katharine

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

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

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

Goldblum, Jeff

12.

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

13.

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

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.

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

16.

From '86 until the summer of last year, wherever I went, people would say, You would have made a great James Bond! Weren't you going to be James Bond? You should have been, you could have been, you may have been. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It was like unfinished business in my life. I couldn't say no to it this time around.

Brosnan, Pierce

17.

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

Davis, Bette

18.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

19.

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

Close, Glenn

20.

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

21.

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

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.

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

24.

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

Hitchcock, Alfred

25.

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

26.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

27.

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

28.

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

Newman, Paul

29.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

30.

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

Garland, Judy

31.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

32.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

33.

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

George, Boy

34.

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

35.

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

36.

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

37.

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

Fiske, Minnie

38.

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

Duras, Marguerite

39.

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

Diderot, Denis

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Welles, Orson

45.

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

46.

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

Richardson, Miranda

47.

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

48.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

49.

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

John, Elton

50.

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