Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

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

Field, Eugene

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

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

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

Howard, Ron

The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays that part.

Cervantes, Miguel De

The mere mechanical technique of acting can be taught, but the spirit that is to give life to lifeless forms must be born in a man. No dramatic college can teach its pupils to think or to feel. It is Nature who makes our artists for us, though it may be Art who taught them their right mode of expression.

Wilde, Oscar

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

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you -- tripping on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as Leif the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say, the whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.

Shakespeare, William

10.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

11.

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

Diderot, Denis

12.

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

Spacey, Kevin

13.

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

14.

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

15.

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.

Wilder, Thornton

16.

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.

17.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

18.

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

19.

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

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.

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

22.

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

Marceau, Marcel

23.

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

24.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

25.

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

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.

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

Leoni, Tea

28.

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

29.

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

30.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

31.

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

Moreau, Jeanne

32.

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

33.

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

Quinn, Anthony

34.

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

Johnson, Alva

35.

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

Carrey, Jim

36.

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

37.

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

Newman, Paul

38.

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

39.

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

Garland, Judy

40.

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

41.

You name it and I've done it. I'd like to say I did it my way. But that line, I'm afraid, belongs to someone else.

Davis Jr., Sammy

42.

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

43.

Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that's printed about him.

Welles, Orson

44.

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

Hitchcock, Alfred

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

48.

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

49.

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

Shearer, Norma

50.

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