Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

Duras, Marguerite

Zane, Billy

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

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

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

Glass, George

The real actor has a direct line to the collective heart.

Davis, Bette

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

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

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

10.

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

11.

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

12.

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.

13.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

14.

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

15.

They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.

Hazlitt, William

16.

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

Wood, Elijah

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Carrey, Jim

22.

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

23.

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

Forrest, Edwin

24.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

28.

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

Irons, Jeremy

29.

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

Vaughan, Bill

30.

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

Howard, Ron

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

35.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

36.

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

37.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

38.

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

Diderot, Denis

39.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

40.

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

Garland, Judy

41.

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

42.

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

43.

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

Half, Robert

44.

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

45.

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

Baldwin, Alec

46.

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

47.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

48.

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

49.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

50.

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