Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

In civilized life, where the happiness and indeed almost the existence of man, depends on the opinion of his fellow men. He is constantly acting a studied part.

Irving, Washington

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

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

Garland, Judy

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

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

Duras, Marguerite

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

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

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

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

Hepburn, Katharine

10.

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

11.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

12.

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

Newman, Paul

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Fonda, Jane

16.

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

17.

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

18.

Actors ought to be larger than life. You come across quite enough ordinary, nondescript people in daily life and I don't see why you should be subjected to them on the stage too.

Sinden, Donald

19.

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

20.

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

21.

They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. We see ourselves at second-hand in them: they show us all that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be. What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as they imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them. There is no class of society whom so many persons regard with affection as actors.

Hazlitt, William

22.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

23.

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

24.

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

25.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

26.

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

Howard, Ron

27.

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

Moreau, Jeanne

28.

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

29.

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

Vaughan, Bill

30.

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

31.

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

Lansbury, Angela

32.

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

33.

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

Welles, Orson

34.

If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent.

Wood, Elijah

35.

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

Leoni, Tea

36.

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

George, Boy

37.

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

Close, Glenn

38.

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

Forrest, Edwin

39.

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

Chaplin, Charlie

40.

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

41.

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

Johnson, Alva

42.

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

Marceau, Marcel

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

47.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

48.

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

Glass, George

49.

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

50.

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

Fiske, Minnie