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

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

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

Moreau, Jeanne

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

Hitchcock, Alfred

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

Leoni, Tea

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

Irons, Jeremy

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

The actor searches vainly for the sound of a vanished tradition, and critic and audience follow suit. We have lost all sense of ritual and ceremony -- whether it be connected with Christmas, birthdays or funerals -- but the words remain with us and old impulses stir in the marrow. We feel we should have rituals, we should do something about getting them and we blame the artists for not finding them for us. So the artist sometimes attempts to find new rituals with only his imagination as his source: he imitates the outer form of ceremonies, pagan or baroque, unfortunately adding his own trapping -- the result is rarely convincing. And after the years and years of weaker and waterier imitations we now find ourselves rejecting the very notion of a holy stage. It is not the fault of the holy that it has become a middle-class weapon to keep the children good.

Brook, Peter (Stephen 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

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

10.

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

11.

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

Python, Monty

12.

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

13.

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

Hazlitt, William

14.

If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.

Hepburn, Katharine

15.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

16.

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

17.

You spend all your life trying to do something they put people in asylums for.

Fonda, Jane

18.

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

19.

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

20.

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

Wood, Elijah

21.

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

22.

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

23.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

24.

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

Diderot, Denis

25.

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

26.

Such is an actor's life. We must ride the waves of every film, barfing occasionally, yet maintain our dignity, even as the bulk of our Herculean efforts are keel-hauled before our very eyes. [On filming MacHale's Navy]

Campbell, Bruce

27.

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

Field, Eugene

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Sinden, Donald

31.

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

Forrest, Edwin

32.

You don't merely give over your creativity to making a film -- you give over your life! In theatre, by contrast, you live these two rather strange lives simultaneously; you have no option but to confront the mould on last night's washing-up.

Lewis, Daniel Day

33.

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

Fiske, Minnie

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.

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

36.

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

Hannah, Daryl

37.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

38.

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

Shearer, Norma

39.

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

Johnson, Alva

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Cusack, John

43.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

44.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

49.

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