Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

Glass, George

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

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

Welles, Orson

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

Barthes, Roland

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

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

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

Some scenes you juggle two balls, some scenes you juggle three balls, some scenes you can juggle five balls. The key is always to speak in your own voice. Speak the truth. That's Acting 101. Then you start putting layers on top of that. [On his acting techniques]

D'Onofrio, Vincent

10.

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

11.

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

Marceau, Marcel

12.

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

13.

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

Carrey, Jim

14.

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

Forrest, Edwin

15.

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

16.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

17.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

18.

Acting on a good idea is better than just having a good idea.

Half, Robert

19.

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.

20.

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

Lansbury, Angela

21.

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

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.

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

24.

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

Vaughan, Bill

25.

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

26.

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

Baldwin, Alec

27.

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

28.

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.

29.

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

30.

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

Goldblum, Jeff

31.

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

32.

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

Shearer, Norma

33.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

34.

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

35.

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

Garland, Judy

36.

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

Moreau, Jeanne

37.

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

38.

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

Duras, Marguerite

39.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Newman, Paul

47.

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

48.

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

Fiske, Minnie

49.

Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life. The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis.

Brando, Marlon

50.

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