Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

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

Davis, Bette

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

Chaplin, Charlie

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

Byron, Lord

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

Python, Monty

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

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

Duras, Marguerite

Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic art is in no sense cathartic; it is merely a form of emotional masturbation. It is the rarest thing to find a player who has not had his character affected for the worse by the practice of his profession. Nobody can make a habit of self-exhibition, nobody can exploit his personality for the sake of exercising a kind of hypnotic power over others, and remain untouched by the process.

Huxley, Aldous

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

10.

Mr. Clarke played the King all evening as though under constant fear that someone else was about to play the Ace.

Field, Eugene

11.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

12.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

13.

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

Forrest, Edwin

14.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

15.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

16.

Do not try to push your way through to the front ranks of your profession; do not run after distinctions and rewards; but do your utmost to find an entry into the world of beauty.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

17.

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

Baldwin, Alec

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.

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

Lansbury, Angela

20.

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

Howard, Ron

21.

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

Carrey, Jim

22.

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

23.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

24.

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

Fiske, Minnie

25.

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

Marceau, Marcel

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Glass, George

29.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

30.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

31.

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

32.

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

Welles, Orson

33.

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

Sinden, Donald

34.

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

Moreau, Jeanne

35.

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

Hazlitt, William

36.

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

37.

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

38.

Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.

Newman, Paul

39.

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

40.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

41.

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

42.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

43.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

44.

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

45.

It's a business you go into because you're an egocentric. It's a very embarrassing profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

46.

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

47.

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

48.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

49.

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

50.

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