Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

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

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

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.

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

Spacey, Kevin

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

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

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

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

Davis, Bette

10.

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

11.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Byron, Lord

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn an Event.

Barthes, Roland

21.

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

22.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

23.

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

Marceau, Marcel

24.

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

Duras, Marguerite

25.

Actors are loved because they are unoriginal. Actors stick to their script. The unoriginal man is loved by the mediocrity because this kind of artistic expression is something to which the merest five-eighth can climb.

Kavanagh, Patrick

26.

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)

27.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

28.

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

Forrest, Edwin

29.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

30.

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

31.

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

32.

Do not try to push your way through to the front ranks of your profession; do not run after distinctions and rewards; but do your utmost to find an entry into the world of beauty.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

33.

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

34.

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

Garland, Judy

35.

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

36.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

37.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Wood, Elijah

42.

Remember: there are no small parts, only small actors.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

43.

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

44.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

45.

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

46.

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

Hazlitt, William

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Carrey, Jim