Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

An actor is only merchandise.

- Chow Yun-Fat

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

I'm an assistant storyteller. It's like being a waiter or a gas-station attendant, but I'm waiting on six million people a week, if I'm lucky. [On being an actor]

Ford, Harrison

Stage charm guarantees in advance an actor's hold on the audience, it helps him to carry over to large numbers of people his creative purposes. It enhances his roles and his art. Yet it is of utmost importance that he use this precious gift with prudence, wisdom, and modesty. It is a great shame when he does not realize this and goes on to exploit, to play on his ability to charm.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

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

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

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

John, Elton

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

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

Duras, Marguerite

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

10.

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

11.

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

Field, Eugene

12.

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

Close, Glenn

13.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

14.

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

15.

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

Vaughan, Bill

16.

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

Byron, Lord

17.

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

Howard, Ron

18.

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

Lansbury, Angela

19.

More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.

Hagen, Uta

20.

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

21.

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

Irons, Jeremy

22.

I never said all actors are cattle, what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.

Hitchcock, Alfred

23.

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

Baldwin, Alec

24.

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

25.

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

Sinden, Donald

26.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

27.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

28.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

29.

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

30.

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

31.

Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.

Goldblum, Jeff

32.

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

33.

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Barthes, Roland

37.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

38.

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

Garland, Judy

39.

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.

40.

Imagination, industry, and intelligence -- the three I s -- are all indispensable to the actress, but of these three the greatest is, without doubt, imagination.

Terry, Ellen

41.

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

42.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

43.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

44.

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

Fonda, Jane

45.

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

46.

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

Half, Robert

47.

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

Python, Monty

48.

The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting.

Chaplin, Charlie

49.

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

50.

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

Davis, Bette