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

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

Cusack, John

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

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

Barthes, Roland

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

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

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

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

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

Field, Eugene

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

10.

Oh! it offends me to the soul to hear a robust periwig-pated fellow, tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings.

Shakespeare, William

11.

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

12.

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

Quinn, Anthony

13.

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

14.

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

15.

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

Welles, Orson

16.

I'm not handsome in the classical sense. The eyes droop, the mouth is crooked, the teeth aren't straight, the voice sounds like a Mafioso pallbearer, but somehow it all works.

Stallone, Sylvester

17.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

18.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

19.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

20.

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

Duras, Marguerite

21.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

22.

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

23.

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.

24.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

25.

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

26.

A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar-- you pretend it's not there.

Hannah, Daryl

27.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

28.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

29.

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

30.

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

Forrest, Edwin

31.

A true priest is aware of the presence of the altar during every moment that he is conducting a service. It is exactly the same way that a true artist should react to the stage all the time he is in the theater. An actor who is incapable of this feeling will never be a true artist.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

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.

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

Glass, George

34.

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

35.

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

Irons, Jeremy

36.

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

Sinden, Donald

37.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

38.

I'm not an actress who can create a character. I play me.

Moore, Mary Tyler

39.

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

John, Elton

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

44.

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

Baldwin, Alec

45.

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

Moreau, Jeanne

46.

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

47.

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

Richardson, Miranda

48.

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

Marceau, Marcel

49.

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

50.

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger