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 (1911–93) American Film Actor
I have to act to live.
—Laurence Olivier (1907–89) English Actor, Producer, Director
Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Ah just act the way ah feel.
—Elvis Presley (1935–77) American Musician, Singer, Songwriter, Actor
If a person were to try stripping the disguises from actors while they play a scene upon stage, showing to the audience their real looks and the faces they were born with, would not such a one spoil the whole play ? And would not the spectators think he deserved to be driven out of the theatre with brickbats, as a drunken disturber ?.. Now what else is the whole life of mortals but a sort of comedy, in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each one his part, until the manager waves them off the stage ? Moreover, this manager frequently bids the same actor to go back in a different costume, so that he who has but lately played the king in scarlet now acts the flunkey in patched clothes. Thus all things are presented by shadows.
—Desiderius Erasmus (c.1469–1536) Dutch Humanist, Scholar
You spend all your life trying to do something they put people in asylums for.
—Jane Fonda (b.1937) American Actress, Political Activist
While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
We become actors without realizing it, and actors without wanting to.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (1821–81) Swiss Moral Philosopher, Poet, Critic
It’s a business you go into because you’re an egocentric. It’s a very embarrassing profession.
—Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) American Actor, TV Personality
Stage charm guarantees in advance an actor’s hold on the audience, it helps him to carry over to large numbers of people his creative purposes. It enhances his roles and his art. Yet it is of utmost importance that he use this precious gift with prudence, wisdom, and modesty. It is a great shame when he does not realize this and goes on to exploit, to play on his ability to charm.
—Constantin Stanislavski (1863–1938) Russian Actor, Theater Personality
I was born at the age of twelve on a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot.
—Judy Garland (1922–69) American Actress, Singer
I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don’t remember ever having seen one weep.
—Denis Diderot (1713–84) French Philosopher, Writer
If a farmer fills his barn with grain, he gets mice. If he leaves it empty, he gets actors.
—Burton Hillis (William E. Vaughan) (1915–77) American Columnist, Author
The actor is an athlete of the heart.
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French Actor, Drama Theorist
The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn an Event.
—Roland Barthes (1915–80) French Writer, Critic, Teacher
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.
—Harrison Ford (b.1942) American Actor
The goal of every culture is to decay through over-civilization; the factors of decadence,—luxury, skepticism, weariness and superstition,—are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.
—Cyril Connolly (1903–74) British Literary Critic, Writer
A young girl must not be taken to the theatre, let us say it once for all. It is not only the drama which is immoral, but the place.
—Alexandre Dumas pere (1802–1870) French Novelist, Playwright
All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women in it merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
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 (1907–99) French Film Director
Some people are addicts. If they don’t act, they don’t exist.
—Jeanne Moreau (1928–2017) French Stage, Screen Actor, Singer
An actor is at most a poet and at least an entertainer.
—Marlon Brando (1924–2004) American Film, Stage Actor
Someplace along the line the audience discovered you. In my case it was playing the Gipper.
—Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American Head of State
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 (1907–73) British-born American Poet, Dramatist
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
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 (1783–1859) American Essayist, Biographer, Historian
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 (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist
The most difficult character in comedy is that of a fool, and he must be no simpleton who plays the part.
—Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish Novelist
Acting is a question of absorbing other people’s personalities and adding some of your own experience.
—Paul Newman (1925–2008) American Actor, Philanthropist
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 (b.1957) English Actor
It is with some violence to the imagination that we conceive of an actor belonging to the relations of private life, so closely do we identify these persons in our mind with the characters they assume upon the stage.
—Charles Lamb (1775–1834) British Essayist, Poet
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.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
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 (1844–1923) French Actress
When an actor has money, he doesn’t send letters, but telegrams.
—Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian Short-Story Writer
…the case for individual freedom rests largely on the recognition of the inevitable and universal ignorance of all of us concerning a great many of the factors on which the achievements of our ends and welfare depend
—Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) British Economist, Social Philosopher
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.
—Constantin Stanislavski (1863–1938) Russian Actor, Theater Personality
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 (1880–1946) American Actor, Comedian, Writer
A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.
—Jane Fonda (b.1937) American Actress, Political Activist
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 (b.1957) English Actor
Acting is not being emotional, but being able to express emotion.
—Thomas Reid (1710–96) Scottish Philosopher, Clergyman
It is not whether you really cry. It’s whether the audience thinks you are crying.
—Ingrid Bergman (1915–82) Swedish Actor
Acting doesn’t bring anything to a text. On the contrary, it detracts from it.
—Marguerite Duras (1914–96) French Novelist, Playwright
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. (1925–90) American Singer, Musician, Dancer, Actor
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 (1907–2003) American Actor, TV Personality
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 (1928–2017) French Stage, Screen Actor, Singer
If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.
—Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) American Actor, TV Personality
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 (1897–1975) American Novelist, Playwright
She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American Humorist, Journalist
Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that’s printed about him.
—Orson Welles (1915–85) American Film Director, Actor
They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist