Quotes about acting-and-actors

You are not in business to be popular.

— Kirstie Alley

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

— Henri Frederic Amiel

The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in their profession that the less socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.

— W. H. Auden

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

— Alec Baldwin

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

— Ellen Barkin

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.

— Ethel Barrymore

The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn an Event.

— Roland Barthes

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.

— Sarah Bernhardt

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

— Marlon Brando

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.

— Marlon Brando

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

A man who strains himself on the stage is bound, if he is any good, to strain all the people sitting in the stalls.

— Bertolt Brecht

One forgets too easily the difference between a man and his image, and that there is none between the sound of his voice on the screen and in real life.

— Robert Bresson

The actor searches vainly for the sound of a vanished tradition, and critic and audience follow suit. We have lost all sense of ritual and ceremony -- whether it be connected with Christmas, birthdays or funerals -- but the words remain with us and old impulses stir in the marrow. We feel we should have rituals, we should do something about getting them and we blame the artists for not finding them for us. So the artist sometimes attempts to find new rituals with only his imagination as his source: he imitates the outer form of ceremonies, pagan or baroque, unfortunately adding his own trapping -- the result is rarely convincing. And after the years and years of weaker and waterier imitations we now find ourselves rejecting the very notion of a holy stage. It is not the fault of the holy that it has become a middle-class weapon to keep the children good.

— Peter (Stephen Paul) Brook

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.

— Pierce Brosnan

When I was a fireman I was in a lot of burning buildings. It was a great job, the only job I ever had that compares with the thrill of acting. Before going into a fire, there's the same surge of adrenaline you get just before the camera rolls.

— Steve Buscemi

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

— Lord Byron

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.

— Michael Caine

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]

— Bruce Campbell

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.

— Thomas Campbell

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

— Jim Carrey

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

— Miguel De Cervantes

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

— Charlie Chaplin

Actors search for rejection. If they don't get it they reject themselves.

— Chevy Chase

When an actor has money, he doesn't send letters, but telegrams.

— Anton Chekhov

An actor is only merchandise.

— Chow Yun-Fat

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

— Glenn Close

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

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

— John Cusack

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

— Jean-Claude Van Damme

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.

— Marion Davies

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.

— Sammy Davis Jr.

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

— Bette Davis

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

— Denis Diderot

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]

— Vincent D'Onofrio

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.

— Minnie Driver

I find myself fascinating.

— Richard Dreyfus

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.

— Elaine Dundy

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

— Marguerite Duras

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.

— Marguerite Duras

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

— Eugene Field

Show me a great actor and I'll show you a lousy husband. Show me a great actress, and you've seen the devil.

— W. C. Fields

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

— Minnie Fiske

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

— Henry Fonda

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

— Jane Fonda

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

— Jane Fonda

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]

— Harrison Ford

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

— Edwin Forrest

I was born at the age of twelve on a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot.

— Judy Garland

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

— Boy George

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

— George Glass

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

— Jeff Goldblum

Acting is happy agony.

— Sir Alec Guiness

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.

— Uta Hagen

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

— Robert Half

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

— Daryl Hannah

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

— William Hazlitt

We must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all.

— William Hazlitt

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.

— William Hazlitt

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

— Katharine Hepburn

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.

— Katharine Hepburn

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

— Katharine Hepburn

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

— Katharine Hepburn

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

— Alfred Hitchcock

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

— Ron Howard

I have tried to be as eclectic as I possibly can with my professional life, and so far it's been pretty fun.

— Holly Hunter

Talk to them about things they don't know. Try to give them an inferiority complex. If the actress is beautiful, screw her. If she isn't, present her with a valuable painting she will not understand. If they insist on being boring, kick their asses or twist their noses. And that's about all there is to it.

— John Huston

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.

— Aldous Huxley

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

— Jeremy Irons

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.

— Washington Irving

Acting provides the fulfillment of never being fulfilled. You're never as good as you'd like to be. So there's always something to hope for.

— Glenda Jackson

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.

— Glenda Jackson

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

— Elton John

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

— Alva Johnson

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.

— Samuel Johnson

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.

— Patrick Kavanagh

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.

— Kevin Kline

I just stopped playing bitches on wheels and peoples' mothers. I have only a few more years to kick up my heels!

— Angela Lansbury

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.

— Lucy Lawless

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

— Tea Leoni

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.

— Daniel Day Lewis

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.

— Daniel Day Lewis

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?

— Juliette Lewis

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?

— Micheal Macliammoir

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.

— John Malkovich

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

— Marcel Marceau

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.

— Frances McDormand

Actors die so loud.

— Henry Miller

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.

— Robert Mitchum

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

— Mary Tyler Moore

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

— Roger Moore

Some people are addicts. If they don't act, they don't exist.

— Jeanne Moreau

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.

— Jeanne Moreau

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

— Paul Newman

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.

— Lena Olin

I have to act to live.

— Sir Lawrence Olivier

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

— Al Pacino

Elizabeth Taylor is pre-feminist woman. This is the source of her continuing greatness and relevance. She wields the sexual power that feminism cannot explain and has tried to destroy. Through stars like Taylor, we sense the world-disordering impact of legendary women like Delilah, Salome, and Helen of Troy. Feminism has tried to dismiss the femme fatale as a misogynist libel, a hoary clich?. But the femme fatale expresses women's ancient and eternal control of the sexual realm. The specter of the femme fatale stalks all men's relations with women.

— Camille Paglia

She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.

— Dorothy Parker

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.

— Sarah Jessica Parker