Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

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

Wood, Elijah

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

Garland, Judy

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

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

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

Half, Robert

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'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

One forgets too easily the difference between a man and his image, and that there is none between the sound of his voice on the screen and in real life.

Bresson, Robert

10.

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

Sinden, Donald

11.

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

Shearer, Norma

12.

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

13.

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

John, Elton

14.

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

Field, Eugene

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

19.

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

20.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

21.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

22.

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

Python, Monty

23.

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

Lansbury, Angela

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.

The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in their profession that the less socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.

Auden, W. H.

26.

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

27.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

28.

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

Goldblum, Jeff

29.

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

30.

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

Welles, Orson

31.

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

32.

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

Irons, Jeremy

33.

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

Cusack, John

34.

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

35.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

36.

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

Fiske, Minnie

37.

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

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.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

40.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

41.

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.

42.

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

Hitchcock, Alfred

43.

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

44.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

45.

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

Glass, George

46.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

47.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

48.

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

49.

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

Carrey, Jim

50.

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