Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

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

Newman, Paul

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

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

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

Irons, Jeremy

10.

I'm not an actress who can create a character. I play me.

Moore, Mary Tyler

11.

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

Hazlitt, William

12.

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

Close, Glenn

13.

I think every American actor wants to be a movie star. But I never wanted to do stupid movies, I wanted to do films. I vowed I would never do a commercial, nor would I do a soap opera -- both of which I did as soon as I left the [Acting] Company and was starving.

Kline, Kevin

14.

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

15.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

16.

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

George, Boy

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Marceau, Marcel

20.

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

Garland, Judy

21.

This is not a tough job. You read a script. If you like the part and the money is O.K., you do it. Then you remember your lines. You show up on time. You do what the director tells you to do. When you finish, you rest and then go on to the next part. That's it.

Mitchum, Robert

22.

A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar-- you pretend it's not there.

Hannah, Daryl

23.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

24.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

25.

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

John, Elton

26.

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

Glass, George

27.

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

28.

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)

29.

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

30.

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

Baldwin, Alec

31.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

32.

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

Forrest, Edwin

33.

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

34.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

35.

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

Half, Robert

36.

When I was a fireman I was in a lot of burning buildings. It was a great job, the only job I ever had that compares with the thrill of acting. Before going into a fire, there's the same surge of adrenaline you get just before the camera rolls.

Buscemi, Steve

37.

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

Lansbury, Angela

38.

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.

39.

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

Howard, Ron

40.

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

41.

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

Leoni, Tea

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

46.

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

Welles, Orson

47.

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

Davis, Bette

48.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

49.

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

Sinden, Donald

50.

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