Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Marceau, Marcel

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

Sinden, Donald

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

Goldblum, Jeff

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

Shearer, Norma

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

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

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

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

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

The actor searches vainly for the sound of a vanished tradition, and critic and audience follow suit. We have lost all sense of ritual and ceremony -- whether it be connected with Christmas, birthdays or funerals -- but the words remain with us and old impulses stir in the marrow. We feel we should have rituals, we should do something about getting them and we blame the artists for not finding them for us. So the artist sometimes attempts to find new rituals with only his imagination as his source: he imitates the outer form of ceremonies, pagan or baroque, unfortunately adding his own trapping -- the result is rarely convincing. And after the years and years of weaker and waterier imitations we now find ourselves rejecting the very notion of a holy stage. It is not the fault of the holy that it has become a middle-class weapon to keep the children good.

Brook, Peter (Stephen Paul)

10.

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

George, Boy

11.

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

12.

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

13.

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

14.

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

15.

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

Byron, Lord

16.

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

17.

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

18.

I was sitting in the looping studio late one night, and I had this epiphany that they weren't paying me for my acting, for God's sake, but to own me. And from then on, it became clear and an awful lot easier to deal with.

Lawless, Lucy

19.

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

Forrest, Edwin

20.

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

Fiske, Minnie

21.

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

22.

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

Marceau, Marcel

23.

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

Welles, Orson

24.

In Europe an actor is an artist. In Hollywood, if he isn't working, he's a bum.

Quinn, Anthony

25.

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

Fonda, Jane

26.

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

Hazlitt, William

27.

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

28.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

29.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

30.

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

31.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

32.

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

Chaplin, Charlie

33.

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

34.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

35.

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

36.

For the theatre one needs long arms; it is better to have them too long than too short. An artiste with short arms can never, never make a fine gesture.

Bernhardt, Sarah

37.

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

38.

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

Diderot, Denis

39.

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

Glass, George

40.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

41.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

42.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

43.

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

John, Elton

44.

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

Pacino, Al

45.

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.

46.

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

Lansbury, Angela

47.

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

48.

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

Moreau, Jeanne

49.

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

50.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen