Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

People say I'm cocky, but am I supposed to sit here and be insecure and not know where my future's going or not realize that moviemaking is the greatest thing to happen to me?

- Lewis, Juliette

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

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

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

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

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

Wood, Elijah

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

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

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

10.

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

Baldwin, Alec

11.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

12.

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

Fiske, Minnie

13.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

14.

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

Quinn, Anthony

15.

People say I'm cocky, but am I supposed to sit here and be insecure and not know where my future's going or not realize that moviemaking is the greatest thing to happen to me?

Lewis, Juliette

16.

Acting deals with very delicate emotions. It is not putting up a mask. Each time an actor acts he does not hide; he exposes himself.

Moreau, Jeanne

17.

I'd prefer not to be the pretty thing in a film. It's such a bloody responsibility to look cute, because people know when you don't and they're like, They're trying to pass her off as the cute girl and she's looking like a bedraggled sack of potatoes.

Driver, Minnie

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

24.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

25.

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

Close, Glenn

26.

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

27.

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

Python, Monty

28.

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

29.

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

Chaplin, Charlie

30.

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

Marceau, Marcel

31.

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

Spacey, Kevin

32.

She represents the un-vowed aspiration of the male human being, his potential infidelity -- and infidelity of a very special kind, which would lead him to the opposite of his wife, to the woman of wax whom he could model at will, make and unmake in any way he wished, even unto death.

Duras, Marguerite

33.

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

Forrest, Edwin

34.

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

John, Elton

35.

I am acquainted with no immaterial sensuality so delightful as good acting.

Byron, Lord

36.

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.

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Welles, Orson

40.

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

41.

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

Leoni, Tea

42.

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

Diderot, Denis

43.

You can't do four movies and be good to everybody and be flying all night and shooting all day with a different wig and then be going to sing on Broadway without feeling a little tired. You endlessly feel you're letting somebody down.

Parker, Sarah Jessica

44.

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

Pacino, Al

45.

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

Johnson, Alva

46.

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

Fonda, Jane

47.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

48.

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

Half, Robert

49.

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

50.

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

Hazlitt, William