Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

- Moore, Roger

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

Chaplin, Charlie

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

Shearer, Norma

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

Fonda, Jane

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

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

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

Half, Robert

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

Hazlitt, William

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

12.

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

13.

I never said all actors are cattle, what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.

Hitchcock, Alfred

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Irons, Jeremy

17.

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

18.

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

Goldblum, Jeff

19.

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

20.

I don't do T & A very well because I haven't got much of either.

Leoni, Tea

21.

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

Davis, Bette

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

26.

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

Quinn, Anthony

27.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

28.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

29.

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

30.

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

Howard, Ron

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Barthes, Roland

35.

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

Glass, George

36.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

37.

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

Newman, Paul

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Sinden, Donald

43.

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

44.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

45.

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.

46.

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

Pacino, Al

47.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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