Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Howard, Ron

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

Actors often behave like children, and so we're taken for children. I want to be grown up.

Irons, Jeremy

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

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

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

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

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

10.

Some scenes you juggle two balls, some scenes you juggle three balls, some scenes you can juggle five balls. The key is always to speak in your own voice. Speak the truth. That's Acting 101. Then you start putting layers on top of that. [On his acting techniques]

D'Onofrio, Vincent

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

14.

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

Duras, Marguerite

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Lansbury, Angela

18.

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

19.

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

20.

Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.

Goldblum, Jeff

21.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

22.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

28.

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

Spacey, Kevin

29.

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

Marceau, Marcel

30.

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

31.

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

Python, Monty

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

The real actor has a direct line to the collective heart.

Davis, Bette

36.

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

Forrest, Edwin

37.

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

Chaplin, Charlie

38.

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

Baldwin, Alec

39.

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

Diderot, Denis

40.

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.

41.

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

Fiske, Minnie

42.

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

43.

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

44.

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

45.

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

John, Elton

46.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Welles, Orson

50.

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