Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Quinn, Anthony

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

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

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

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

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

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

Wood, Elijah

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.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

10.

I think I am a much better actor than I have allowed myself to be.

Spacey, Kevin

11.

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

Forrest, Edwin

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.

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Baldwin, Alec

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Close, Glenn

26.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

27.

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

John, Elton

28.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

29.

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

30.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

31.

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

32.

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

Davis, Bette

33.

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

Fonda, Jane

34.

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

Marceau, Marcel

35.

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

41.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

42.

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you -- tripping on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as Leif the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say, the whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.

Shakespeare, William

43.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

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.

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

George, Boy

46.

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

Goldblum, Jeff

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Leoni, Tea

50.

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