Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

Hazlitt, William

The main factor in any form of creativeness is the life of a human spirit, that of the actor and his part, their joint feelings and subconscious creation.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

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

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

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

Howard, Ron

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

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

Baldwin, Alec

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

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

Marceau, Marcel

10.

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

11.

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

Barthes, Roland

12.

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

13.

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

Goldblum, Jeff

14.

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

15.

I'd prefer not to be the pretty thing in a film. It's such a bloody responsibility to look cute, because people know when you don't and they're like, They're trying to pass her off as the cute girl and she's looking like a bedraggled sack of potatoes.

Driver, Minnie

16.

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

Johnson, Alva

17.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

26.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

27.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

28.

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.

29.

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

Carrey, Jim

30.

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

Irons, Jeremy

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

34.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

35.

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

36.

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

37.

If you have to be in a soap opera try not to get the worst role.

George, Boy

38.

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

39.

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

Lansbury, Angela

40.

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

Fonda, Jane

41.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

42.

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

Forrest, Edwin

43.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

44.

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

45.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

46.

The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in their profession that the less socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.

Auden, W. H.

47.

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

Python, Monty

48.

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

49.

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

50.

Every time I get a script it's a matter of trying to know what I could do with it. I see colors, imagery. It has to have a smell. It's like falling in love. You can't give a reason why.

Olin, Lena