Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

Oh! it offends me to the soul to hear a robust periwig-pated fellow, tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings.

- Shakespeare, William

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

This is not a tough job. You read a script. If you like the part and the money is O.K., you do it. Then you remember your lines. You show up on time. You do what the director tells you to do. When you finish, you rest and then go on to the next part. That's it.

Mitchum, Robert

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

Shearer, Norma

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

Baldwin, Alec

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

Hepburn, Katharine

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

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

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

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

Irons, Jeremy

10.

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

11.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

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 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

14.

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

Newman, Paul

15.

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

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.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

18.

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

Hannah, Daryl

19.

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

Howard, Ron

20.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

21.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

22.

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

23.

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

Glass, George

24.

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

25.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

26.

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

Richardson, Miranda

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Johnson, Alva

30.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

31.

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

Duras, Marguerite

32.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

33.

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

Pacino, Al

34.

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

Wood, Elijah

35.

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

36.

More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.

Hagen, Uta

37.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

38.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

39.

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

40.

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.

41.

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

42.

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

Byron, Lord

43.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

44.

She represents the un-vowed aspiration of the male human being, his potential infidelity -- and infidelity of a very special kind, which would lead him to the opposite of his wife, to the woman of wax whom he could model at will, make and unmake in any way he wished, even unto death.

Duras, Marguerite

45.

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

George, Boy

46.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

47.

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

48.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

49.

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

50.

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