Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Irons, Jeremy

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

Hazlitt, William

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

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

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

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

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

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

George, Boy

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

Close, Glenn

10.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

11.

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

Moreau, Jeanne

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Shearer, Norma

17.

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

Baldwin, Alec

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

21.

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

22.

They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. We see ourselves at second-hand in them: they show us all that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be. What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as they imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them. There is no class of society whom so many persons regard with affection as actors.

Hazlitt, William

23.

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

Duras, Marguerite

24.

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

25.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

26.

She represents the un-vowed aspiration of the male human being, his potential infidelity -- and infidelity of a very special kind, which would lead him to the opposite of his wife, to the woman of wax whom he could model at will, make and unmake in any way he wished, even unto death.

Duras, Marguerite

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Goldblum, Jeff

30.

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

31.

For an actress to be a success, she must have the face of Venus, the brains of a Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of a Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros.

Barrymore, Ethel

32.

An actor is a guy who, if you ain't talking about him, he ain't listening.

Glass, George

33.

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

Lansbury, Angela

34.

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

35.

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

Barthes, Roland

36.

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

Python, Monty

37.

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

Carrey, Jim

38.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

44.

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

45.

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

Cusack, John

46.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

47.

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

Forrest, Edwin

48.

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