Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Pacino, Al

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

Sinden, Donald

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

Close, Glenn

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

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

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

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

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

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

Irons, Jeremy

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

Spacey, Kevin

10.

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

Goldblum, Jeff

11.

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

Vaughan, Bill

12.

Acting provides the fulfillment of never being fulfilled. You're never as good as you'd like to be. So there's always something to hope for.

Jackson, Glenda

13.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

14.

I'm not handsome in the classical sense. The eyes droop, the mouth is crooked, the teeth aren't straight, the voice sounds like a Mafioso pallbearer, but somehow it all works.

Stallone, Sylvester

15.

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

16.

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

Duras, Marguerite

17.

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

18.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

19.

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

20.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

21.

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

Byron, Lord

22.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

23.

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

24.

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

Wood, Elijah

25.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

26.

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

27.

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

Pacino, Al

28.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Chaplin, Charlie

32.

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

Carrey, Jim

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Python, Monty

36.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

37.

A true priest is aware of the presence of the altar during every moment that he is conducting a service. It is exactly the same way that a true artist should react to the stage all the time he is in the theater. An actor who is incapable of this feeling will never be a true artist.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

38.

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

Hannah, Daryl

39.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

40.

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

Davis, Bette

41.

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

42.

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

Celebrity is death --- celebrity -- that's the worst thing that can happen to an actor.

Cusack, John

47.

The mug is a tool. My ace in the hole. To have looks is the bonus on top of what motivates me to be an actor. Not to realize they're an asset would be counterproductive to the cause; they serve the common good.

Zane, Billy

48.

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

Fonda, Jane

49.

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

50.

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