Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

Hitchcock, Alfred

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

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

Newman, Paul

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

Hepburn, Katharine

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

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

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

Moreau, Jeanne

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

Shearer, Norma

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

10.

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

Richardson, Miranda

11.

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

Forrest, Edwin

12.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

13.

It's not a field, I think, for people who need to have success every day: if you can't live with a nightly sort of disaster, you should get out. I wouldn't describe myself as lacking in confidence, but I would just say that the ghosts you chase you never catch.

Malkovich, John

14.

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

15.

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

Half, Robert

16.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

17.

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

Vaughan, Bill

18.

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

Howard, Ron

19.

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

20.

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

21.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

22.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

23.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

24.

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

Glass, George

25.

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

26.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

27.

I'd prefer not to be the pretty thing in a film. It's such a bloody responsibility to look cute, because people know when you don't and they're like, They're trying to pass her off as the cute girl and she's looking like a bedraggled sack of potatoes.

Driver, Minnie

28.

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

Johnson, Alva

29.

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

Goldblum, Jeff

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.

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

32.

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

Carrey, Jim

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

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

Marceau, Marcel

46.

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

47.

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