Actors speak of things imaginary as if they were real, while you preachers too often speak of things real as if they were imaginary. — Thomas Betterton

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

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

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 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. — 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

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

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 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

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. —Elaine Dundy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. — Téa 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

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

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

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

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

All men practice the actor's art. — Petron

Ah just act the way ah feel. — Elvis Presley

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. — Vincent Price

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

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

I must say that acting was good training for the political life that lay ahead of us. — Nancy Reagan

A lot of what acting is paying attention. — Robert Redford

Acting is not being emotional, but being able to express emotion. — Thomas Reid

Insecurity, commonly regarded as a weakness in normal people, is the basic tool of the actor's trade. —Miranda Richardson

There are no small parts. Only small actors. —Ginger Rogers

I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead. [On his college registration experience]
Tom Selleck

An actress must never lose her ego -- without it she has no talent.
Norma Shearer

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.
Donald Sinden

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.
Mira Sorvino

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

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.
Sylvester Stallone

Do not try to push your way through to the front ranks of your profession; do not run after distinctions and rewards; but do your utmost to find an entry into the world of beauty.
Konstantin Stanislavisky

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.
Konstantin Stanislavisky

Imagination, industry, and intelligence -- "the three I s" -- are all indispensable to the actress, but of these three the greatest is, without doubt, imagination.
Ellen Terry

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

There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.
Spencer Tracy

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.
Skeet Ulrich

If a farmer fills his barn with grain, he gets mice. If he leaves it empty, he gets actors.
Bill Vaughan

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.
Forest Whitaker

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
Oscar Wilde

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.
Thornton Wilder

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

Actors are one family over the entire world.
Alfre Woodard

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.
Billy Zane

I do not regret one professional enemy I have made. Any actor who doesn't dare to make an enemy should get out of the business. — Bette Davis (1908 - 1989), The Lonely Life, 1962.

Talk low, talk slow, and don't talk too much. — John Wayne (1907 - 1979), Advice on acting.

Acting is not being emotional, but being able to express emotion. — Kate Reid

Acting is the most minor of 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 (1909 -2003 )

I love acting. It is so much more real than life. — Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891.

I enjoy being a highly overpaid actor. — Roger Moore

Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing.
— Sir Ralph Richardson (1902 - 1983), quoted in New York Herald Tribune, May 19, 1946

We're actors - we're the opposite of people. — Tom Stoppard , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Man is a make-believe animal–he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part. –William Hazlitt
An actor is a sculptor who carves in snow. — Lawrence Barrett

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances and one man in his time plays many parts. — William Shakespeare

Never meddle with play actors, for they're a favored race. –Miguel de Cervantes

If a gun is hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last. — Anton Chekhov

Drama is action, sir, action and not confounded philosophy. — Luigi Pirandello

Dying is easy. Comedy is hard. –Edmund Kean
( When he was dying, Kean said this in answer to his son's question "Is it difficult for you, father?")

When an actor has money he doesn't send letters, he sends telegrams. — Anton Chekhov.

The actor is too prone to exaggerate his powers; he wants to play Hamlet when his appearance is more suitable to King Lear. — Sarah Bernhardt.

Only a great actor finds the difficulties of the actor’s art infinite. — Ellen Terry

I don't want to see the uncut version of anything. — Jean Kerr

Hell is a half-filled auditorium. — Robert Frost

Hollywood is a place where they you under contract instead of under observation. — Walter Winchell

A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car. — Kenneth Tynan

The Hollywood tradition I like best is called "sucking up to the stars". — Johnny Carson

The art of acting consists in keeping people from coughing. — Sir Ralph Richardson

"Hello," he lied. — Don Carpenter quoting a Hollywood agent.

Working in the theater has a lot in common with unemployment. — Arthur Gingold.

My tears stuck in their little ducks, refusing to be jerked. — Peter Stack in a movie review.

The dead actor requested in his will that his body be cremated and ten percent of his ashes thrown in his agent's face. — Unknown

An associate producer is the only guy in Hollywood who will associate with a producer. — Fred Allen.

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. — Constantine Stanislavski

Remember: there are no small parts, only small actors. — Constantine Stanislavski

Acting is not being emotional, but being able to express emotion. — Kate Reid

Acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four. — Katherine Hepburn

Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing. — Sir Ralph Richardson

Actors are the opposite of people. — Tom Stoppard

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


Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. — Oscar Wilde

Imagination, industry, and intelligence -- ''the three I s'' -- are all indispensable to the actress, but of these three the greatest is, without doubt, imagination. — Ellen Terry

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. — Oscar Wilde


A talented trumpeter who toots his own horn winds up playing to an empty theatre. A talented trumpeter who lets others recognize his talent winds up a legend. — Lisa Edmondson

Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull. — Rod Serling

How quick bright things come to confusion. — A Midsummer Nights Dream Movie

All the world's a stage. Some of us just have better seats. —Unknown

Acting is not a state of being ... but a state of appearing to be. You can't be eight times a week without going stark staring mad. You've got to be in control. — Noel Coward

Theatergoing is a communal act, movie going a solitary one. — Robert Brustein

You can throw away the privilege of acting, but that would be such a shame. The tribe has elected you to tell its story. You are the shaman/healer, that's what the storyteller is, and I think it's important for actors to appreciate that. Too often actors think it's all about them, when in reality it's all about the audience being able to recognize themselves in you. The more you pull away from the public, the less power you have on screen. — Ben Kingsley

It's one of the tragic ironies of the theatre that only one man in it can count on steady work - the night watchman. — Tallulah Bankhead

My bearing was a blend of assurance and professional vivacity; the fact that my bowels were as water I hope was not apparent to anybody. — Noel Coward on auditions in Present Indicative

We can shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want. — Lao Tzu

The best actors do not let the wheels show. —Henry Fonda

Logic opens the mind; Emotion opens the Heart. — Ken Farmer

The actor is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without the work. —Ken Farmer

Have more than thou showest; Speak less than thou knowest. — Shakespeare

Always work from inside out; if you work from the outside in, all you have is a dry husk. — Meryl Streep

Never let yourself get between you and your character. — Michael Caine

(!) — Marcel Marceau