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

Spacey, Kevin

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

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

Field, Eugene

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

Marceau, Marcel

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

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

Hepburn, Katharine

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

Newman, Paul

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

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

10.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

11.

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

12.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

George, Boy

17.

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

18.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

19.

Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.

Johnson, Samuel

20.

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

Carrey, Jim

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Byron, Lord

25.

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

26.

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

27.

I have tried to be as eclectic as I possibly can with my professional life, and so far it's been pretty fun.

Hunter, Holly

28.

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

29.

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

Pacino, Al

30.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

31.

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

Welles, Orson

32.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

33.

In civilized life, where the happiness and indeed almost the existence of man, depends on the opinion of his fellow men. He is constantly acting a studied part.

Irving, Washington

34.

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

35.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

36.

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

37.

I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don't remember ever having seen one weep.

Diderot, Denis

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.

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

Baldwin, Alec

40.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

41.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

42.

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

Duras, Marguerite

43.

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

Python, Monty

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

49.

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

50.

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

Forrest, Edwin