Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

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

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

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

George, Boy

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

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.

Newman, Paul

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

Fiske, Minnie

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

10.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

11.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

12.

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

13.

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

Hazlitt, William

14.

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.

15.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

16.

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

17.

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

Vaughan, Bill

18.

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

19.

Until Ace Ventura, no actor had considered talking through his ass.

Carrey, Jim

20.

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

21.

I am acquainted with no immaterial sensuality so delightful as good acting.

Byron, Lord

22.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

23.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

24.

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

Goldblum, Jeff

25.

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

26.

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you -- tripping on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as Leif the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say, the whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.

Shakespeare, William

27.

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

Sinden, Donald

28.

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

Chaplin, Charlie

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Welles, Orson

33.

Acting doesn't bring anything to a text. On the contrary, it detracts from it.

Duras, Marguerite

34.

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

Glass, George

35.

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

Close, Glenn

36.

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

37.

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

Fonda, Jane

38.

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

39.

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

Forrest, Edwin

40.

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

41.

A man who strains himself on the stage is bound, if he is any good, to strain all the people sitting in the stalls.

Brecht, Bertolt

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Diderot, Denis

45.

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

46.

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

47.

It's a business you go into because you're an egocentric. It's a very embarrassing profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

48.

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

Cusack, John

49.

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

50.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert