Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Close, Glenn

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

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

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

Forrest, Edwin

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

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

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

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

Newman, Paul

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

Hannah, Daryl

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

Irons, Jeremy

10.

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

11.

I'm an actor. And I guess I've done so many movies I've achieved some high visibility. But a star? I guess I still think of myself as kind of a worker ant.

Whitaker, Forest

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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.

15.

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

Hazlitt, William

16.

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

17.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

18.

The mug is a tool. My ace in the hole. To have looks is the bonus on top of what motivates me to be an actor. Not to realize they're an asset would be counterproductive to the cause; they serve the common good.

Zane, Billy

19.

If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent.

Wood, Elijah

20.

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

21.

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

22.

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

Field, Eugene

23.

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

24.

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

Marceau, Marcel

25.

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

26.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

27.

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

Duras, Marguerite

28.

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

Garland, Judy

29.

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

30.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

31.

Remember this practical piece of advice: Never come into the theatre with mud on your feet. Leave your dust and dirt outside. Check your little worries, squabbles, petty difficulties with your outside clothing -- all the things that ruin your life and draw your attention away from your art -- at the door.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Lansbury, Angela

37.

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

38.

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

Leoni, Tea

39.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

40.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

41.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

42.

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

43.

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

Carrey, Jim

44.

Such is an actor's life. We must ride the waves of every film, barfing occasionally, yet maintain our dignity, even as the bulk of our Herculean efforts are keel-hauled before our very eyes. [On filming MacHale's Navy]

Campbell, Bruce

45.

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

46.

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

Chaplin, Charlie

47.

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

Howard, Ron

48.

People say I'm cocky, but am I supposed to sit here and be insecure and not know where my future's going or not realize that moviemaking is the greatest thing to happen to me?

Lewis, Juliette

49.

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

50.

They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. We see ourselves at second-hand in them: they show us all that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be. What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as they imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them. There is no class of society whom so many persons regard with affection as actors.

Hazlitt, William