Acting Quotes

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...

In musical performances one can sense that the person on stage is having a good time even if they're...

Opponents of capital punishment argue that the state has no right to take a murderer's life. Apparen...

I think people involved in politics make good actors. Acting and politics both involve fooling peopl...

I mean, sometimes... a comedian becomes an actor, and they just don't deliver, because the bottom li...

Stylized 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...

Ultimately, you have to not worry about people thinking you should have played him differently. You'...

Starting with a party scene for 600 cast and end up singing on top of a giant elephant...does it get...

A lot of parents tell their children that if they want to be an actor, that's fine, but they should ...

People are incredibly rude about it sometimes. Like, `What? You`re married?` Strange reaction to hav...

The beautiful thing about it is that no two directors or actors work the same way. You also learn no...

The nature of the human mind is such that unless it is stimulated by images of things acting upon it...

Any actor who tells you that they have become the people they play, unless they’re clearly diagnosed...

Caregiving requires the intention of love, caretaking requires the intention of fear. Not acting in ...

With 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...

The virtue of gay equality has become increasingly recognized in the U.S. because people have been p...

A 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...

The 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, ...

I won't do this movie because I don't believe the love story," she told Selznick. "The heroine is an...

No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does straight to our emotions deep into ...

I sometimes wish they would swagger more now buy bigger overcoats and wilder hats and retain those...

Long experience has taught me that in England nobody goes to the theatre unless he or she has bronch...

I feel as if I could be any thing or every thing, as if I could rant and storm, or sigh, or cut cape...

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...

There are kids who get on a BMX bike when they're eight years old and they go, 'Whoa, this is incred...

The only time I commit to conspiracy theories is when something way retarded happens. Like Lee Harve...

His intuition was luminous from the instant you met him. So was his intelligence. A lot of actors ac...

When I arrived at Columbia, I gave up acting and became interested in all things French. French poet...

True tragedy may be defined as a dramatic work in which the outward failure of the principal persona...

Death 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...

A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama...

That's what acting is - it's about... having the courage to allow your audience into the private mom...

We gotta be willing to let it hurt. You know, all this notion that acting is “yeah it’s pretend” and...

Once I accomplish one thing and I'm satisfied, I try something else. I may be 50 and doing something...

The biggest spur to my interest in art came when I played van Gogh in the biographical film Lust For...

A lot of moms give their kids line reads. My mom wasn't put in that position because I always had an...

I don't want to discredit people's individuality, but I think people are pretty much the same. Peopl...

I must work harder to achieve my goal of not seeking approval from those whose approval I'm not even...

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...

The 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...

You know, when I first went into the movies Lionel Barrymore played my grandfather. Later he played ...

In his madness he became a terrifying actor!

When the characters are really alive before their author the latter does nothing but follow them in...

When most dullards hear the words 'the theater,' they envision a twelve-screen multiplex where disas...

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

As much as we Egyptians treasure our military, acting alone it cannot provide the legitimacy to lay ...

She looked exactly like an angel. I know my jaw dropped a little, and I just stood there looking at ...

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...

By increasing the size of the keyhole today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door...

The 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...

Literature, although it stands apart by reason of the great destiny and general use of its medium in...

The 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...

More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact ...

A word does not frighten the man who, in acting, feels no fear.

Just know your lines and don't bump into the furniture.

The actor cannot afford to look only to his own life for all his material nor pull strictly from his...

The imagination is closer to the actor than real life-more agreeable, more comfortable.

The best author is a dead author, because he's out of your way and you own the play. Take what he ha...

The thing that makes you say, "I want to do something" - that is the beginning of talent.

You have to understand your best. Your best isn't Barrymore's best or Olivier's best or my best, but...

You cannot afford to confine your studies to the classroom. The universe and all of history is your ...

You should want to act only because you want to be led to something bigger in life.

You have to do something. If you do something, you become somebody. Even a daffodil does something, ...

You will fail. That's great. Here's a secret for you - that's the only way you can learn. Learning h...

Be innocent, wise and ninety-five.

If you can't take both sides, it means you can only play yourself.

You'll never really be great unless you aim high.

No actor is a success unless he feels inside himself, as long as he lives, that he is good.

When actors begin to think it is time for a change. They are not fitted for it.

...teaching is, after all, a form of show business.

I think I'm an actor because I have very strong imagination and empathy. I never studied acting, but...

At once, it’s clear I cannot gush. We try me playing cocky, but I just don’t have the arrogance. App...

A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and understand it the first time ...

Didn't they realize that the only way to change things was to act?

He completely lacked any ardent interest that might have occupied his mind. His interior life was im...

A play visibly represents pure existing.

I was playing Rasputin and what was motivating him was crumpet really, and I was extremely keen on c...

Many plays certainly mine are like blank cheques. The actors and directors put their own signature...

The unencumbered stage encourages the truth operative in everyone. The less seen the more heard. Th...

Even when I was a teen model, I didn't think it was fair that I had to enter the acting world to get...

I don't understand', I say,'why they care what I think, as long as I'm acting how they want me to.''...

I'm really very sorry for you all, but it's an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatr...