Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Vaughan, Bill

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

Quinn, Anthony

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

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

Fiske, Minnie

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

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

Close, Glenn

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

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

Python, Monty

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

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

Barthes, Roland

10.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

11.

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

Goldblum, Jeff

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Howard, Ron

18.

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

Irons, Jeremy

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.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

21.

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

22.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Welles, Orson

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

George, Boy

29.

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

Field, Eugene

30.

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

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.

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.

33.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

34.

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

35.

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

Baldwin, Alec

36.

The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful -- my personal life suffers.

Pacino, Al

37.

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

Newman, Paul

38.

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

39.

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

Richardson, Miranda

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Marceau, Marcel

43.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

Shaw, George Bernard

44.

People say I'm cocky, but am I supposed to sit here and be insecure and not know where my future's going or not realize that moviemaking is the greatest thing to happen to me?

Lewis, Juliette

45.

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

Glass, George

46.

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

47.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

48.

After Blood Simple, everybody thought I was from Texas. After Mississippi Burning, everybody thought I was from Mississippi and uneducated. After Fargo, everybody's going to think I'm from Minnesota, pregnant, and have blonde hair. I don't think you can ever completely transform yourself on film, but if you do your job well, you can make people believe that you're the character you're trying to be.

McDormand, Frances

49.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

50.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin