Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

Actors die so loud.

- Miller, Henry

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

Imagination, industry, and intelligence -- the three I s -- are all indispensable to the actress, but of these three the greatest is, without doubt, imagination.

Terry, Ellen

It's not a field, I think, for people who need to have success every day: if you can't live with a nightly sort of disaster, you should get out. I wouldn't describe myself as lacking in confidence, but I would just say that the ghosts you chase you never catch.

Malkovich, John

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

Irons, Jeremy

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

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

Hepburn, Katharine

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

Half, Robert

I mean, the question actors most often get asked is how they can bear saying the same things over and over again, night after night, but God knows the answer to that is, don't we all anyway; might as well get paid for it.

Dundy, Elaine

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

Fiske, Minnie

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

10.

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

11.

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

Newman, Paul

12.

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

Python, Monty

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Carrey, Jim

16.

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

Johnson, Alva

17.

I'm disappointed in acting as a craft. I want everything to go back to Orson Welles and fake noses and changing your voice. It's become so much about personality.

Ulrich, Skeet

18.

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

Goldblum, Jeff

19.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

20.

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

21.

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

22.

A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar-- you pretend it's not there.

Hannah, Daryl

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Sinden, Donald

28.

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

29.

Some scenes you juggle two balls, some scenes you juggle three balls, some scenes you can juggle five balls. The key is always to speak in your own voice. Speak the truth. That's Acting 101. Then you start putting layers on top of that. [On his acting techniques]

D'Onofrio, Vincent

30.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

31.

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

32.

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.

33.

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

Diderot, Denis

34.

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

Barthes, Roland

35.

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.

36.

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

Glass, George

37.

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

38.

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

Welles, Orson

39.

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

40.

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

41.

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

Vaughan, Bill

42.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

43.

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

Byron, Lord

44.

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

Fonda, Jane

45.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

46.

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

47.

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

48.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

49.

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

50.

Oh! it offends me to the soul to hear a robust periwig-pated fellow, tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings.

Shakespeare, William