Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Hitchcock, Alfred

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

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

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

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

Newman, Paul

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

Howard, Ron

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

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

Close, Glenn

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

Marceau, Marcel

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

Hepburn, Katharine

10.

I'm not handsome in the classical sense. The eyes droop, the mouth is crooked, the teeth aren't straight, the voice sounds like a Mafioso pallbearer, but somehow it all works.

Stallone, Sylvester

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Vaughan, Bill

14.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

15.

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

Hazlitt, William

16.

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

Cusack, John

17.

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

Forrest, Edwin

18.

Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.

Johnson, Samuel

19.

We become actors without realizing it, and actors without wanting to.

Amiel, Henri Frederic

20.

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

Garland, Judy

21.

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

22.

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

Quinn, Anthony

23.

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

Python, Monty

24.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

25.

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

26.

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

Moreau, Jeanne

27.

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

28.

I'm an assistant storyteller. It's like being a waiter or a gas-station attendant, but I'm waiting on six million people a week, if I'm lucky. [On being an actor]

Ford, Harrison

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Fiske, Minnie

33.

I'm not an actress who can create a character. I play me.

Moore, Mary Tyler

34.

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

35.

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

Barthes, Roland

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Welles, Orson

41.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

42.

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

Shearer, Norma

43.

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

44.

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

Fonda, Jane

45.

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

Baldwin, Alec

46.

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

47.

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

48.

Talk to them about things they don't know. Try to give them an inferiority complex. If the actress is beautiful, screw her. If she isn't, present her with a valuable painting she will not understand. If they insist on being boring, kick their asses or twist their noses. And that's about all there is to it.

Huston, John

49.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

50.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De