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

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

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

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

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

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

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

Close, Glenn

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

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

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

10.

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

Vaughan, Bill

11.

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

Baldwin, Alec

12.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Leoni, Tea

16.

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

Lansbury, Angela

17.

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

Carrey, Jim

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

22.

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

23.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

24.

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

John, Elton

25.

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

26.

You spend all your life trying to do something they put people in asylums for.

Fonda, Jane

27.

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

28.

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

Fiske, Minnie

29.

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

Diderot, Denis

30.

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

31.

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

Duras, Marguerite

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.

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

Howard, Ron

34.

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

Hitchcock, Alfred

35.

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

Barthes, Roland

36.

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

37.

I mean, the question actors most often get asked is how they can bear saying the same things over and over again, night after night, but God knows the answer to that is, don't we all anyway; might as well get paid for it.

Dundy, Elaine

38.

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

Chaplin, Charlie

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.

An agent is a person who is sore because an actor gets 90% of what they make.

Johnson, Alva

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Hannah, Daryl

45.

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

46.

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

47.

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