Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Johnson, Alva

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

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

Insecurity, commonly regarded as a weakness in normal people, is the basic tool of the actor's trade.

Richardson, Miranda

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

Duras, Marguerite

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

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

Garland, Judy

You name it and I've done it. I'd like to say I did it my way. But that line, I'm afraid, belongs to someone else.

Davis Jr., Sammy

10.

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

14.

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

15.

Acting provides the fulfillment of never being fulfilled. You're never as good as you'd like to be. So there's always something to hope for.

Jackson, Glenda

16.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

17.

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

John, Elton

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Moreau, Jeanne

22.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

23.

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

Welles, Orson

24.

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

Chaplin, Charlie

25.

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

Davis, Bette

26.

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

Half, Robert

27.

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

Johnson, Alva

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.

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

30.

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

Howard, Ron

31.

I am acquainted with no immaterial sensuality so delightful as good acting.

Byron, Lord

32.

I don't do T & A very well because I haven't got much of either.

Leoni, Tea

33.

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

George, Boy

34.

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.

35.

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

Hazlitt, William

36.

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

37.

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

38.

I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead. [On his college registration experience]

Selleck, Tom

39.

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

Shearer, Norma

40.

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

Barthes, Roland

41.

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

Spacey, Kevin

42.

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

Close, Glenn

43.

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

44.

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

45.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Irons, Jeremy

49.

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.

50.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor