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

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

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

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

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

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

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

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

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

10.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

11.

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

Glass, George

12.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

13.

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

14.

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

Howard, Ron

15.

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.

16.

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

Vaughan, Bill

17.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

18.

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

19.

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

Sinden, Donald

20.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

21.

Every time I get a script it's a matter of trying to know what I could do with it. I see colors, imagery. It has to have a smell. It's like falling in love. You can't give a reason why.

Olin, Lena

22.

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

Duras, Marguerite

23.

From '86 until the summer of last year, wherever I went, people would say, You would have made a great James Bond! Weren't you going to be James Bond? You should have been, you could have been, you may have been. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It was like unfinished business in my life. I couldn't say no to it this time around.

Brosnan, Pierce

24.

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

Hannah, Daryl

25.

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

26.

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

Spacey, Kevin

27.

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

28.

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

George, Boy

29.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

30.

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

31.

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

Leoni, Tea

32.

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

33.

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

Field, Eugene

34.

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

Richardson, Miranda

35.

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

Fonda, Jane

36.

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

Hitchcock, Alfred

37.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

38.

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

39.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

40.

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

41.

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

Close, Glenn

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Johnson, Alva

46.

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

47.

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

Baldwin, Alec

48.

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

49.

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

Forrest, Edwin

50.

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

Hepburn, Katharine