Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

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 an actress who can create a character. I play me.

Moore, Mary Tyler

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'm disappointed in acting as a craft. I want everything to go back to Orson Welles and fake noses and changing your voice. It's become so much about personality.

Ulrich, Skeet

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

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

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

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

Vaughan, Bill

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.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

14.

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

Moreau, Jeanne

15.

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

16.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

17.

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

Python, Monty

18.

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

19.

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

Spacey, Kevin

20.

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

21.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

22.

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

23.

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

24.

The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn an Event.

Barthes, Roland

25.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Hazlitt, William

29.

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

30.

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

Chaplin, Charlie

31.

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.

32.

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

33.

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

34.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

35.

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

Glass, George

36.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

37.

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

38.

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

Marceau, Marcel

39.

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

Lansbury, Angela

40.

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

41.

I'd prefer not to be the pretty thing in a film. It's such a bloody responsibility to look cute, because people know when you don't and they're like, They're trying to pass her off as the cute girl and she's looking like a bedraggled sack of potatoes.

Driver, Minnie

42.

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

43.

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

Welles, Orson

44.

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

Johnson, Alva

45.

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

Forrest, Edwin

46.

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

Baldwin, Alec

47.

Remember this practical piece of advice: Never come into the theatre with mud on your feet. Leave your dust and dirt outside. Check your little worries, squabbles, petty difficulties with your outside clothing -- all the things that ruin your life and draw your attention away from your art -- at the door.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Irons, Jeremy