Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

Goldblum, Jeff

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

Hazlitt, William

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

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

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

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

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

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

10.

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

11.

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

George, Boy

12.

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

Baldwin, Alec

13.

Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic art is in no sense cathartic; it is merely a form of emotional masturbation. It is the rarest thing to find a player who has not had his character affected for the worse by the practice of his profession. Nobody can make a habit of self-exhibition, nobody can exploit his personality for the sake of exercising a kind of hypnotic power over others, and remain untouched by the process.

Huxley, Aldous

14.

In civilized life, where the happiness and indeed almost the existence of man, depends on the opinion of his fellow men. He is constantly acting a studied part.

Irving, Washington

15.

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

16.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

17.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

18.

The mere mechanical technique of acting can be taught, but the spirit that is to give life to lifeless forms must be born in a man. No dramatic college can teach its pupils to think or to feel. It is Nature who makes our artists for us, though it may be Art who taught them their right mode of expression.

Wilde, Oscar

19.

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

Close, Glenn

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Sinden, Donald

23.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

24.

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

25.

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

26.

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

Carrey, Jim

27.

I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don't remember ever having seen one weep.

Diderot, Denis

28.

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

29.

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.

30.

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

31.

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

32.

The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays that part.

Cervantes, Miguel De

33.

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

34.

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

35.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

36.

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

Irons, Jeremy

37.

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

38.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

39.

I mean, the question actors most often get asked is how they can bear saying the same things over and over again, night after night, but God knows the answer to that is, don't we all anyway; might as well get paid for it.

Dundy, Elaine

40.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

41.

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

42.

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

Spacey, Kevin

43.

Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that's printed about him.

Welles, Orson

44.

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

45.

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

46.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

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 lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

49.

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

50.

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

Python, Monty