Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Amiel, Henri Frederic

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

Fonda, Jane

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

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

To see him act is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

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

Irons, Jeremy

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

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

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

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.

10.

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

Moreau, Jeanne

11.

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

Byron, Lord

12.

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

13.

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.

14.

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

Davis, Bette

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Marceau, Marcel

19.

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

Barthes, Roland

20.

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

21.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

22.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

23.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

I can't tell you how many shows I've done with full-blown migraine headaches.

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

29.

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

30.

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

31.

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

Duras, Marguerite

32.

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

Shearer, Norma

33.

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

34.

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

35.

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

36.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

37.

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Field, Eugene

42.

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

Hazlitt, William

43.

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

Half, Robert

44.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

45.

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

Garland, Judy

46.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Diderot, Denis

50.

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