Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- John, Elton

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

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

Chaplin, Charlie

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

Baldwin, Alec

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

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

An actor who knows his business ought to be able to make the London telephone directory sound enthralling.

Sinden, Donald

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

Johnson, Alva

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

Howard, Ron

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

10.

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

11.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

12.

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

Goldblum, Jeff

13.

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

Spacey, Kevin

14.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

15.

Acting on a good idea is better than just having a good idea.

Half, Robert

16.

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

17.

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

18.

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

19.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

20.

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

21.

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

Hitchcock, Alfred

22.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

23.

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

24.

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

Diderot, Denis

25.

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

26.

The thing about performance, even if it's only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities.

Lewis, Daniel Day

27.

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

Glass, George

28.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

Stage charm guarantees in advance an actor's hold on the audience, it helps him to carry over to large numbers of people his creative purposes. It enhances his roles and his art. Yet it is of utmost importance that he use this precious gift with prudence, wisdom, and modesty. It is a great shame when he does not realize this and goes on to exploit, to play on his ability to charm.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Moreau, Jeanne

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 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

40.

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

George, Boy

41.

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

Shearer, Norma

42.

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

43.

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

Fiske, Minnie

44.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

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 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

47.

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

48.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

49.

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

Duras, Marguerite

50.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane