Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

I don't want to read about some of these actresses who are around today. They sound like my niece in Scarsdale. I love my niece in Scarsdale, but I won't buy tickets to see her act.

Price, Vincent

I think I am a much better actor than I have allowed myself to be.

Spacey, Kevin

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

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

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

Hitchcock, Alfred

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

Python, Monty

Insecurity, commonly regarded as a weakness in normal people, is the basic tool of the actor's trade.

Richardson, Miranda

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

Lansbury, Angela

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.

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

Duras, Marguerite

11.

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

George, Boy

12.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

13.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

14.

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

15.

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.

16.

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

Diderot, Denis

17.

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

Forrest, Edwin

18.

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

19.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

20.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

21.

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

22.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Quinn, Anthony

26.

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

Johnson, Alva

27.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

28.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

29.

You can't do four movies and be good to everybody and be flying all night and shooting all day with a different wig and then be going to sing on Broadway without feeling a little tired. You endlessly feel you're letting somebody down.

Parker, Sarah Jessica

30.

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

Pacino, Al

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

34.

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

Newman, Paul

35.

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

36.

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

Carrey, Jim

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

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.

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

42.

I was born at the age of twelve on a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot.

Garland, Judy

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Marceau, Marcel

47.

I really think that effective acting has to do literally with the movement of molecules.

Close, Glenn

48.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

49.

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

Leoni, Tea

50.

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