Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Shearer, Norma

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

Spacey, Kevin

The mug is a tool. My ace in the hole. To have looks is the bonus on top of what motivates me to be an actor. Not to realize they're an asset would be counterproductive to the cause; they serve the common good.

Zane, Billy

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

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

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

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

Davis, Bette

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

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Field, Eugene

13.

I don't do T & A very well because I haven't got much of either.

Leoni, Tea

14.

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

15.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

16.

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

Goldblum, Jeff

17.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

18.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

19.

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

Howard, Ron

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

Remember: there are no small parts, only small actors.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

24.

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

John, Elton

25.

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

Shearer, Norma

26.

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

27.

From '86 until the summer of last year, wherever I went, people would say, You would have made a great James Bond! Weren't you going to be James Bond? You should have been, you could have been, you may have been. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It was like unfinished business in my life. I couldn't say no to it this time around.

Brosnan, Pierce

28.

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

Duras, Marguerite

29.

You name it and I've done it. I'd like to say I did it my way. But that line, I'm afraid, belongs to someone else.

Davis Jr., Sammy

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

34.

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

35.

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

Marceau, Marcel

36.

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

37.

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Baldwin, Alec

41.

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

42.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

43.

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

Moreau, Jeanne

44.

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

Python, Monty

45.

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

46.

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

Fiske, Minnie

47.

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

Garland, Judy

48.

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

Cusack, John

49.

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