Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Duras, Marguerite

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

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

Fiske, Minnie

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

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

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

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

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

Hepburn, Katharine

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

Field, Eugene

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

Moreau, Jeanne

10.

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

11.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

12.

I just stopped playing bitches on wheels and peoples' mothers. I have only a few more years to kick up my heels!

Lansbury, Angela

13.

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

14.

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

Davis, Bette

15.

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

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.

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

Leoni, Tea

18.

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

19.

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

Newman, Paul

20.

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

Baldwin, Alec

21.

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

Duras, Marguerite

22.

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

23.

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

24.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

25.

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

Cusack, John

26.

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

Python, Monty

27.

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

28.

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

29.

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

30.

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

Spacey, Kevin

31.

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

32.

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

Barthes, Roland

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

37.

She represents the un-vowed aspiration of the male human being, his potential infidelity -- and infidelity of a very special kind, which would lead him to the opposite of his wife, to the woman of wax whom he could model at will, make and unmake in any way he wished, even unto death.

Duras, Marguerite

38.

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

39.

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

Vaughan, Bill

40.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

41.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

42.

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

43.

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

Diderot, Denis

44.

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

Close, Glenn

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

You spend all your life trying to do something they put people in asylums for.

Fonda, Jane

49.

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

Garland, Judy

50.

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