Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Shearer, Norma

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

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

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

Hepburn, Katharine

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

Close, Glenn

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

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

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

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

Hepburn, Katharine

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

Welles, Orson

10.

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

11.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

12.

You don't merely give over your creativity to making a film -- you give over your life! In theatre, by contrast, you live these two rather strange lives simultaneously; you have no option but to confront the mould on last night's washing-up.

Lewis, Daniel Day

13.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

14.

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

15.

I want to do a musical movie. Like Evita, but with good music.

John, Elton

16.

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

Howard, Ron

17.

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

Pacino, Al

18.

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

Field, Eugene

19.

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

20.

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

Shearer, Norma

21.

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

Diderot, Denis

22.

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

Leoni, Tea

23.

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

24.

An actor who knows his business ought to be able to make the London telephone directory sound enthralling.

Sinden, Donald

25.

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

Quinn, Anthony

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

31.

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

Fonda, Jane

32.

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

33.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

34.

Acting deals with very delicate emotions. It is not putting up a mask. Each time an actor acts he does not hide; he exposes himself.

Moreau, Jeanne

35.

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

36.

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

Moreau, Jeanne

37.

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

Half, Robert

38.

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

39.

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

Fiske, Minnie

40.

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

Richardson, Miranda

41.

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

Baldwin, Alec

42.

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

Johnson, Alva

43.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

44.

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

45.

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

Carrey, Jim

46.

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.

47.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

48.

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.

49.

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

50.

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