Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Wood, Elijah

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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.

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

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

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

Chaplin, Charlie

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

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

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

Duras, Marguerite

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

Glass, George

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

10.

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

11.

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

Barthes, Roland

12.

I don't do T & A very well because I haven't got much of either.

Leoni, Tea

13.

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

Pacino, Al

14.

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

15.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

16.

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

17.

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

Welles, Orson

18.

Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.

Johnson, Samuel

19.

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

Vaughan, Bill

20.

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

George, Boy

21.

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

22.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

23.

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

24.

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

25.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

26.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

27.

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

28.

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

Spacey, Kevin

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Quinn, Anthony

32.

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

33.

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

34.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

35.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

36.

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

37.

They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. We see ourselves at second-hand in them: they show us all that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be. What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as they imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them. There is no class of society whom so many persons regard with affection as actors.

Hazlitt, William

38.

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

Garland, Judy

39.

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

40.

The actor searches vainly for the sound of a vanished tradition, and critic and audience follow suit. We have lost all sense of ritual and ceremony -- whether it be connected with Christmas, birthdays or funerals -- but the words remain with us and old impulses stir in the marrow. We feel we should have rituals, we should do something about getting them and we blame the artists for not finding them for us. So the artist sometimes attempts to find new rituals with only his imagination as his source: he imitates the outer form of ceremonies, pagan or baroque, unfortunately adding his own trapping -- the result is rarely convincing. And after the years and years of weaker and waterier imitations we now find ourselves rejecting the very notion of a holy stage. It is not the fault of the holy that it has become a middle-class weapon to keep the children good.

Brook, Peter (Stephen Paul)

41.

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

Python, Monty

42.

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

Shearer, Norma

43.

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

Byron, Lord

44.

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

45.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

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.

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

Marceau, Marcel

48.

I mean, the question actors most often get asked is how they can bear saying the same things over and over again, night after night, but God knows the answer to that is, don't we all anyway; might as well get paid for it.

Dundy, Elaine

49.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

50.

From '86 until the summer of last year, wherever I went, people would say, You would have made a great James Bond! Weren't you going to be James Bond? You should have been, you could have been, you may have been. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It was like unfinished business in my life. I couldn't say no to it this time around.

Brosnan, Pierce