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

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

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

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

Baldwin, Alec

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

Fiske, Minnie

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

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

Forrest, Edwin

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

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

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

10.

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

Leoni, Tea

11.

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

Close, Glenn

12.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

13.

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

Carrey, Jim

14.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

15.

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

Python, Monty

16.

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

17.

Acting provides the fulfillment of never being fulfilled. You're never as good as you'd like to be. So there's always something to hope for.

Jackson, Glenda

18.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

19.

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

Newman, Paul

20.

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

Chaplin, Charlie

21.

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

Byron, Lord

22.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

23.

People say I'm cocky, but am I supposed to sit here and be insecure and not know where my future's going or not realize that moviemaking is the greatest thing to happen to me?

Lewis, Juliette

24.

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

25.

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

Hazlitt, William

26.

To grasp the full significance of life is the actor's duty, to interpret it is his problem, and to express it his dedication.

Brando, Marlon

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Wood, Elijah

32.

To see him act is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Hitchcock, Alfred

36.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

37.

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

Moreau, Jeanne

38.

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

39.

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

40.

I think every American actor wants to be a movie star. But I never wanted to do stupid movies, I wanted to do films. I vowed I would never do a commercial, nor would I do a soap opera -- both of which I did as soon as I left the [Acting] Company and was starving.

Kline, Kevin

41.

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

42.

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

43.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

44.

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

45.

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

Barthes, Roland

46.

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

Hannah, Daryl

47.

Acting is not about dressing up. Acting is about stripping bare. The whole essence of learning lines is to forget them so you can make them sound like you thought of them that instant.

Jackson, Glenda

48.

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

Field, Eugene

49.

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

Fonda, Jane

50.

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