Acting Quotes
Even when I was a teen model, I didn't think it was fair that I had to enter the acting world to get...
Show MoreI don't understand', I say,'why they care what I think, as long as I'm acting how they want me to.''...
Show MoreI'm really very sorry for you all, but it's an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatr...
Show More
There is a perfect rout of characters in every man—and every man is like an actor’s trunk, full of s...
Show MoreIf you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.
Actors are the only honest hypocrites.
In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas, a cosmonaut of inner space, ...
Show MoreI always tell the truth. Even when I lie.
...if the actor gave his performance without knowing that he was in a play, then his tears would be ...
Show More
Acting is happy agony.
Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.
Acting is magical. Change your look and your attitude, and you can be anyone.
Grief and rage--you need to contain that, to put a frame around it, where it can play itself out wit...
Show MoreI've lived all these years among those who create nothing and change nothing,' I said. 'Actors and m...
Show More
Actors and actresses make magic,' I said. 'They make things happen on the stage; they invent; they c...
Show More
And this notion of the meaninglessness of our lives here began to enflame us.I took up the theme aga...
Show More
When an actor has money he doesn't send letters but telegrams.
The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds come home to roost.
Not to go to the theatre is like making one's toilet without a mirror.
I have only one rule in acting - trust the director and give him heart and soul.
The real actor - like any real artistj- has a direct line to the collective heart.
Whenever I think of the high salaries we are paid as film actors, I think it is for the travel, the ...
Show MoreOne of the things I like about acting is that, in a funny way, I come back to myself.
Movie acting suits me because I only need to be good for ninety seconds at a time.
A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting.
ligion is the opiate of the masses." "I did masses of opiates religiously.

I had my heart set on becoming an English teacher, but stumbled into acting after meeting a theatric...
Show MoreWe do not go (to the theatre) like our ancestors to escape from the pressure of reality so much as...
Show MoreBut if I hope to understand in order to accept things - the act of surrender will never happen. I mu...
Show MoreShe was good at playing abstract confusion in the same way that a midget is good at being short.
It seemed that I performed better sober than drunk. Who knew?

I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human. I felt very puny as a human. I though...
Show MoreIn musical performances one can sense that the person on stage is having a good time even if they're...
Show More
Opponents of capital punishment argue that the state has no right to take a murderer's life. Apparen...
Show MoreI think people involved in politics make good actors. Acting and politics both involve fooling peopl...
Show MoreI mean, sometimes... a comedian becomes an actor, and they just don't deliver, because the bottom li...
Show MoreStylized acting and direction is to realistic acting and direction as poetry is to prose.
Theatre is simply what cannot be expressed by any other means a complexity of words movements ges...
Show MoreUltimately, you have to not worry about people thinking you should have played him differently. You'...
Show MoreStarting with a party scene for 600 cast and end up singing on top of a giant elephant...does it get...
Show MoreA lot of parents tell their children that if they want to be an actor, that's fine, but they should ...
Show MorePeople are incredibly rude about it sometimes. Like, `What? You`re married?` Strange reaction to hav...
Show MoreThe beautiful thing about it is that no two directors or actors work the same way. You also learn no...
Show MoreThe nature of the human mind is such that unless it is stimulated by images of things acting upon it...
Show MoreAny actor who tells you that they have become the people they play, unless they’re clearly diagnosed...
Show MoreCaregiving requires the intention of love, caretaking requires the intention of fear. Not acting in ...
Show MoreWith the collapse of vaudeville new talent has no place to stink.
When it comes to social consequences, they've got all different people acting in different ways, ver...
Show MoreThe virtue of gay equality has become increasingly recognized in the U.S. because people have been p...
Show MoreA talent for drama is not a talent for writing but is an ability to articulate human relationships.
Fresh from a costume fitting, where I had been posing in front of the mirror assuming what I thought...
Show MoreThe parenting bit is much harder than the acting bit. You just never know what to do.
I said, "I don't think I can give you that kind of emotion." And he [Hitchcock] sat there and said, ...
Show MoreI won't do this movie because I don't believe the love story," she told Selznick. "The heroine is an...
Show MoreNo form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does straight to our emotions deep into ...
Show MoreI sometimes wish they would swagger more now buy bigger overcoats and wilder hats and retain those...
Show MoreLong experience has taught me that in England nobody goes to the theatre unless he or she has bronch...
Show MoreI feel as if I could be any thing or every thing, as if I could rant and storm, or sigh, or cut cape...
Show More
On stage I make love to twenty-five thousand people then I go home alone.
A good actor must never be in love with anyone but himself.
Even as far back as when I started acting at 14, I know I've never considered failure.
I was very interested in theatre, mostly in stage design. I did a little bit of acting.
...the child trying not to appear as a child, of the strenuousness with which she tried to present t...
Show More
There are kids who get on a BMX bike when they're eight years old and they go, 'Whoa, this is incred...
Show MoreThe only time I commit to conspiracy theories is when something way retarded happens. Like Lee Harve...
Show MoreHis intuition was luminous from the instant you met him. So was his intelligence. A lot of actors ac...
Show MoreWhen I arrived at Columbia, I gave up acting and became interested in all things French. French poet...
Show MoreTrue tragedy may be defined as a dramatic work in which the outward failure of the principal persona...
Show MoreDeath is just the last scene of the last act.

If you give audiences a chance they'll do half your acting for you.
The unique thing about Margaret Rutherford is that she can act with her chin alone. Among its many m...
Show MoreA good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama...
Show MoreThat's what acting is - it's about... having the courage to allow your audience into the private mom...
Show MoreWe gotta be willing to let it hurt. You know, all this notion that acting is “yeah it’s pretend” and...
Show MoreOnce I accomplish one thing and I'm satisfied, I try something else. I may be 50 and doing something...
Show MoreThe biggest spur to my interest in art came when I played van Gogh in the biographical film Lust For...
Show More
A lot of moms give their kids line reads. My mom wasn't put in that position because I always had an...
Show MoreI don't want to discredit people's individuality, but I think people are pretty much the same. Peopl...
Show MoreI must work harder to achieve my goal of not seeking approval from those whose approval I'm not even...
Show More
Acting is illusion, as much illusion as magic is, and not so much a matter of being real.
I know it was wonderful but I don't know how I did it.
[the only acting advice he would give] What is acting but lying and what is good lying but convincin...
Show MoreThe whole motivation for any performer is 'Look at me Ma.'
Spencer Tracy, when asked for advice on acting, said, “Know your lines and don’t bump into the furni...
Show More
You know, when I first went into the movies Lionel Barrymore played my grandfather. Later he played ...
Show MoreIn his madness he became a terrifying actor!

When the characters are really alive before their author the latter does nothing but follow them in...
Show MoreWhen most dullards hear the words 'the theater,' they envision a twelve-screen multiplex where disas...
Show More
The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool and he must be no simpleton that plays t...
Show MoreAs much as we Egyptians treasure our military, acting alone it cannot provide the legitimacy to lay ...
Show MoreShe looked exactly like an angel. I know my jaw dropped a little, and I just stood there looking at ...
Show More
A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.
The play was a great success but the audience was a disaster.
Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experienc...
Show MoreBy increasing the size of the keyhole today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door...
Show MoreThe people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials.
In music the punctuation is absolutely strict the bars and the rests are absolutely defined. But o...
Show MoreLiterature, although it stands apart by reason of the great destiny and general use of its medium in...
Show MoreThe drama's laws the drama's patrons give. For we that live to please must please to live.
I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful and damaging to all things American. But if I were 2...
Show More