Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

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

Marceau, Marcel

Such is an actor's life. We must ride the waves of every film, barfing occasionally, yet maintain our dignity, even as the bulk of our Herculean efforts are keel-hauled before our very eyes. [On filming MacHale's Navy]

Campbell, Bruce

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

If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent.

Wood, Elijah

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

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

Richardson, Miranda

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

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

Glass, George

10.

I think I am a much better actor than I have allowed myself to be.

Spacey, Kevin

11.

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

12.

An agent is a person who is sore because an actor gets 90% of what they make.

Johnson, Alva

13.

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

Vaughan, Bill

14.

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

15.

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

Irons, Jeremy

16.

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

17.

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

Howard, Ron

18.

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

19.

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

Close, Glenn

20.

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

Carrey, Jim

21.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

22.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Welles, Orson

28.

We become actors without realizing it, and actors without wanting to.

Amiel, Henri Frederic

29.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

30.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

31.

One forgets too easily the difference between a man and his image, and that there is none between the sound of his voice on the screen and in real life.

Bresson, Robert

32.

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

Barthes, Roland

33.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

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.

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

36.

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

Chaplin, Charlie

37.

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

Duras, Marguerite

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Garland, Judy

41.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

42.

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

43.

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

Python, Monty

44.

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

Field, Eugene

45.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

46.

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

47.

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

48.

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

49.

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

50.

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

Diderot, Denis