Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

Goldblum, Jeff

In Europe an actor is an artist. In Hollywood, if he isn't working, he's a bum.

Quinn, Anthony

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

Glass, George

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

Diderot, Denis

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

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

Chaplin, Charlie

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

Duras, Marguerite

12.

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

Marceau, Marcel

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

17.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

18.

They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.

Hazlitt, William

19.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

20.

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

Newman, Paul

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

I really think that effective acting has to do literally with the movement of molecules.

Close, Glenn

26.

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

Howard, Ron

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.

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

29.

The thing about performance, even if it's only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities.

Lewis, Daniel Day

30.

There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.

Tracy, Spencer

31.

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

Shearer, Norma

32.

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

33.

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

Richardson, Miranda

34.

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

35.

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

36.

A true priest is aware of the presence of the altar during every moment that he is conducting a service. It is exactly the same way that a true artist should react to the stage all the time he is in the theater. An actor who is incapable of this feeling will never be a true artist.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

37.

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

38.

The real actor has a direct line to the collective heart.

Davis, Bette

39.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

40.

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

Cusack, John

41.

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

42.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

43.

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

Lansbury, Angela

44.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

45.

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

46.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

47.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

48.

Stage charm guarantees in advance an actor's hold on the audience, it helps him to carry over to large numbers of people his creative purposes. It enhances his roles and his art. Yet it is of utmost importance that he use this precious gift with prudence, wisdom, and modesty. It is a great shame when he does not realize this and goes on to exploit, to play on his ability to charm.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

49.

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

Baldwin, Alec

50.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen