Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Hepburn, Katharine

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

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

George, Boy

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marceau, Marcel

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

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Newman, Paul

13.

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

Quinn, Anthony

14.

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

Hazlitt, William

15.

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

Diderot, Denis

16.

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

17.

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

Field, Eugene

18.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

19.

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

20.

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

Carrey, Jim

21.

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

22.

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

Barthes, Roland

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Baldwin, Alec

26.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

31.

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

32.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

33.

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

34.

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

Byron, Lord

35.

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

Richardson, Miranda

36.

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

Leoni, Tea

37.

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

Sinden, Donald

38.

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

39.

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

Forrest, Edwin

40.

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

41.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

42.

They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. We see ourselves at second-hand in them: they show us all that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be. What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as they imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them. There is no class of society whom so many persons regard with affection as actors.

Hazlitt, William

43.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

44.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

45.

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

46.

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

Hitchcock, Alfred

47.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Glass, George