Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Stanislavisky, Konstantin

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

Garland, Judy

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

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

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

Barthes, Roland

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

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

Field, Eugene

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

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

Irons, Jeremy

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

10.

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

11.

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

Forrest, Edwin

12.

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

13.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

14.

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

Fiske, Minnie

15.

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

16.

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

17.

I think every American actor wants to be a movie star. But I never wanted to do stupid movies, I wanted to do films. I vowed I would never do a commercial, nor would I do a soap opera -- both of which I did as soon as I left the [Acting] Company and was starving.

Kline, Kevin

18.

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

Lansbury, Angela

19.

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

20.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Howard, Ron

24.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

25.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

29.

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

30.

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

31.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

32.

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

33.

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

34.

Insecurity, commonly regarded as a weakness in normal people, is the basic tool of the actor's trade.

Richardson, Miranda

35.

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

36.

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.

37.

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

38.

The hardest part has been maintaining a small head--remaining down to earth. So many people try to make you more than you are. This business has changed a lot of good people and a lot of good families, and I don't want that to happen to me.

Brandy

39.

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

40.

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

41.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

42.

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

Welles, Orson

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Fonda, Jane

47.

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.

48.

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

49.

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

50.

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