Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

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

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

John, Elton

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

Diderot, Denis

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

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

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

Marceau, Marcel

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

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

Garland, Judy

10.

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

Davis, Bette

11.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

12.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

13.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

14.

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

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.

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.

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.

Johnson, Samuel

18.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Chaplin, Charlie

23.

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

Fiske, Minnie

24.

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

Glass, George

25.

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.

26.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Python, Monty

30.

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

31.

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

Hazlitt, William

32.

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

33.

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

34.

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

35.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

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.

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

38.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

39.

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

40.

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

41.

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

Close, Glenn

42.

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

Fonda, Jane

43.

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

Wood, Elijah

44.

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

George, Boy

45.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

46.

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

47.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

48.

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

Quinn, Anthony

49.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

50.

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