Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

- Hepburn, Katharine

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

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

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

Davis, Bette

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

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

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

Chaplin, Charlie

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

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

10.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

11.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

12.

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.

13.

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

14.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

15.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

16.

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

Hitchcock, Alfred

17.

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

Glass, George

18.

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

Duras, Marguerite

19.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

20.

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

21.

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

Fiske, Minnie

22.

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

23.

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

24.

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

25.

I just stopped playing bitches on wheels and peoples' mothers. I have only a few more years to kick up my heels!

Lansbury, Angela

26.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

27.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

28.

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

29.

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

Wood, Elijah

30.

In Europe an actor is an artist. In Hollywood, if he isn't working, he's a bum.

Quinn, Anthony

31.

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

32.

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

33.

I don't do T & A very well because I haven't got much of either.

Leoni, Tea

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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.

37.

Such is an actor's life. We must ride the waves of every film, barfing occasionally, yet maintain our dignity, even as the bulk of our Herculean efforts are keel-hauled before our very eyes. [On filming MacHale's Navy]

Campbell, Bruce

38.

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

39.

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

Shearer, Norma

40.

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

Garland, Judy

41.

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

Irons, Jeremy

42.

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

Byron, Lord

43.

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)

44.

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

Newman, Paul

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Vaughan, Bill

48.

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

49.

Imagination, industry, and intelligence -- the three I s -- are all indispensable to the actress, but of these three the greatest is, without doubt, imagination.

Terry, Ellen

50.

Actors ought to be larger than life. You come across quite enough ordinary, nondescript people in daily life and I don't see why you should be subjected to them on the stage too.

Sinden, Donald