Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

Welles, Orson

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

Forrest, Edwin

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

The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful -- my personal life suffers.

Pacino, Al

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

Johnson, Alva

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

John, Elton

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

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.

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

Garland, Judy

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

13.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

14.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

15.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

16.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

17.

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

Irons, Jeremy

18.

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.

19.

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

Chaplin, Charlie

20.

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

21.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

22.

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

23.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

24.

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

25.

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

Close, Glenn

26.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

27.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

28.

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

29.

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

Diderot, Denis

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Baldwin, Alec

33.

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

Goldblum, Jeff

34.

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

35.

If a farmer fills his barn with grain, he gets mice. If he leaves it empty, he gets actors.

Vaughan, Bill

36.

The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays that part.

Cervantes, Miguel De

37.

The mug is a tool. My ace in the hole. To have looks is the bonus on top of what motivates me to be an actor. Not to realize they're an asset would be counterproductive to the cause; they serve the common good.

Zane, Billy

38.

There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.

Tracy, Spencer

39.

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

40.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

41.

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

42.

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

Duras, Marguerite

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

The mere mechanical technique of acting can be taught, but the spirit that is to give life to lifeless forms must be born in a man. No dramatic college can teach its pupils to think or to feel. It is Nature who makes our artists for us, though it may be Art who taught them their right mode of expression.

Wilde, Oscar

50.

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

Fiske, Minnie