Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Wood, Elijah

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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.

The hardest part has been maintaining a small head--remaining down to earth. So many people try to make you more than you are. This business has changed a lot of good people and a lot of good families, and I don't want that to happen to me.

Brandy

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

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

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

Leoni, Tea

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

Wood, Elijah

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

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

Hepburn, Katharine

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

10.

Some scenes you juggle two balls, some scenes you juggle three balls, some scenes you can juggle five balls. The key is always to speak in your own voice. Speak the truth. That's Acting 101. Then you start putting layers on top of that. [On his acting techniques]

D'Onofrio, Vincent

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

15.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

Shaw, George Bernard

16.

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

Spacey, Kevin

17.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

18.

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

Welles, Orson

19.

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

Duras, Marguerite

20.

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

21.

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

George, Boy

22.

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

23.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful -- my personal life suffers.

Pacino, Al

28.

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

29.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

30.

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

Hazlitt, William

31.

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

Davis, Bette

32.

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

33.

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

Forrest, Edwin

34.

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

Half, Robert

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Johnson, Alva

39.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

40.

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

Fiske, Minnie

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Python, Monty

44.

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

Chaplin, Charlie

45.

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

46.

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

Cusack, John

47.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

48.

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

49.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

50.

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

Sinden, Donald