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

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

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

The popularity of that baby-faced boy, who possessed not even the elements of a good actor, was a hallucination in the public mind, and a disgrace to our theatrical history.

Campbell, Thomas

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

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

Fiske, Minnie

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

Fonda, Jane

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

10.

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

11.

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

Cusack, John

12.

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

Half, Robert

13.

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

Spacey, Kevin

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.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Marceau, Marcel

18.

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

19.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Hitchcock, Alfred

25.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

26.

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

Newman, Paul

27.

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

28.

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

Garland, Judy

29.

You know how in high school you do these plays and people come up after the show and they're really excited for you? Well, that's what's happening to me right now.

Sorvino, Mira

30.

Mr. Clarke played the King all evening as though under constant fear that someone else was about to play the Ace.

Field, Eugene

31.

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Richardson, Miranda

35.

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

36.

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

37.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

38.

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

39.

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

40.

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

Sinden, Donald

41.

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

42.

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

Lansbury, Angela

43.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

44.

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

Chaplin, Charlie

45.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

46.

Actors are loved because they are unoriginal. Actors stick to their script. The unoriginal man is loved by the mediocrity because this kind of artistic expression is something to which the merest five-eighth can climb.

Kavanagh, Patrick

47.

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

48.

I want to do a musical movie. Like Evita, but with good music.

John, Elton

49.

I don't get acting jobs because of my looks.

Baldwin, Alec

50.

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