Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

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

Irons, Jeremy

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

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

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

Close, Glenn

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

Chaplin, Charlie

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

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

10.

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

Forrest, Edwin

11.

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

Richardson, Miranda

12.

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

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.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Half, Robert

17.

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

Marceau, Marcel

18.

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

19.

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

Glass, George

20.

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

21.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

22.

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

23.

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

Hitchcock, Alfred

24.

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

Newman, Paul

25.

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.

26.

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

Goldblum, Jeff

27.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

28.

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

Field, Eugene

29.

The thing about performance, even if it's only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities.

Lewis, Daniel Day

30.

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

31.

To grasp the full significance of life is the actor's duty, to interpret it is his problem, and to express it his dedication.

Brando, Marlon

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Leoni, Tea

35.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

36.

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

37.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

38.

An actress must never lose her ego--without it she has no talent.

Shearer, Norma

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Python, Monty

42.

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

43.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

44.

Celebrity is death --- celebrity -- that's the worst thing that can happen to an actor.

Cusack, John

45.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Hannah, Daryl

49.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

50.

The great actors are the luminous ones. They are the great conductors of the stage.

Fiske, Minnie