Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

Such is an actor's life. We must ride the waves of every film, barfing occasionally, yet maintain our dignity, even as the bulk of our Herculean efforts are keel-hauled before our very eyes. [On filming MacHale's Navy]

Campbell, Bruce

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.

Hagen, Uta

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

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

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

Carrey, Jim

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

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

10.

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

Marceau, Marcel

11.

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

12.

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

Half, Robert

13.

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

14.

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

Howard, Ron

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

18.

Lewis, Daniel Day

19.

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

Moreau, Jeanne

20.

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

21.

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

Vaughan, Bill

22.

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

23.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

24.

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

Barthes, Roland

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

29.

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

Fiske, Minnie

30.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

31.

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

Shearer, Norma

32.

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

Python, Monty

33.

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

John, Elton

34.

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

35.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

36.

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

37.

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

Fonda, Jane

38.

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

39.

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

40.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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.

45.

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

46.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

47.

If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent.

Wood, Elijah

48.

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

Davis, Bette

49.

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