Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

- Hepburn, Katharine

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

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

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

Every time I get a script it's a matter of trying to know what I could do with it. I see colors, imagery. It has to have a smell. It's like falling in love. You can't give a reason why.

Olin, Lena

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

Newman, Paul

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

Moreau, Jeanne

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

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

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

10.

If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.

Hepburn, Katharine

11.

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

Fiske, Minnie

12.

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

Glass, George

13.

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

14.

The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful -- my personal life suffers.

Pacino, Al

15.

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

Half, Robert

16.

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)

17.

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

18.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

19.

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

20.

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

Vaughan, Bill

21.

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

22.

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

Cusack, John

23.

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.

24.

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

Forrest, Edwin

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.

The thing about performance, even if it's only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities.

Lewis, Daniel Day

27.

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

28.

I don't think there's a punch-line scheduled, is there?

Python, Monty

29.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

30.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Leoni, Tea

34.

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

35.

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

36.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

37.

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

38.

You know how in high school you do these plays and people come up after the show and they're really excited for you? Well, that's what's happening to me right now.

Sorvino, Mira

39.

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

40.

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

Wood, Elijah

41.

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

Irons, Jeremy

42.

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

Hannah, Daryl

43.

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

44.

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

Spacey, Kevin

45.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

46.

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

47.

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

48.

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

49.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

50.

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

John, Elton