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

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

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

Goldblum, Jeff

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

Show me a great actor and I'll show you a lousy husband. Show me a great actress, and you've seen the devil.

Fields, W. C.

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

Hannah, Daryl

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

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

John, Elton

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

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

10.

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

Hazlitt, William

11.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

12.

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

13.

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

Fiske, Minnie

14.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

15.

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

16.

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

17.

Actors ought to be larger than life. You come across quite enough ordinary, nondescript people in daily life and I don't see why you should be subjected to them on the stage too.

Sinden, Donald

18.

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

Chaplin, Charlie

19.

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

20.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

21.

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

22.

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

23.

Imagination, industry, and intelligence -- the three I s -- are all indispensable to the actress, but of these three the greatest is, without doubt, imagination.

Terry, Ellen

24.

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

George, Boy

25.

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

26.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

27.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

28.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Shearer, Norma

33.

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.

34.

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

35.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

36.

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

Moreau, Jeanne

37.

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

38.

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

Irons, Jeremy

39.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

40.

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

Johnson, Alva

41.

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

42.

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

43.

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

Glass, George

44.

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

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.

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

47.

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

Cusack, John

48.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

49.

If a farmer fills his barn with grain, he gets mice. If he leaves it empty, he gets actors.

Vaughan, Bill

50.

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.