You spend all your life trying to do something they put people in asylums for.
—Jane Fonda (b.1937) American Actress, Political Activist
Acting is the perfect idiot’s profession.
—Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) American Actor, TV Personality
It’s easy to direct while acting; there’s one less person to argue with.
—Roman Polanski (b.1933) French Film Director, Film Producer, Actor, Screenwriter
I was born at the age of twelve on a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot.
—Judy Garland (1922–69) American Actress, Singer
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
The essence of intelligence is skill in extracting meaning from everyday experience.
—Unknown
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
Actors die so loud.
—Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist
I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
Oh! it offends me to the soul to hear a robust periwig-pated fellow, tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
When he ran from a cop his transitions from accelerating walk to easy jog trot to brisk canter to headlong gallop to flogged-piston sprint…were as distinct and as soberly in order as an automatic gearshift.
—James Agee (1909–55) American Journalist, Poet, Screenwriter, Film Critic
The main factor in any form of creativeness is the life of a human spirit, that of the actor and his part, their joint feelings and subconscious creation.
—Constantin Stanislavski (1863–1938) Russian Actor, Theater Personality
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 (1778–1830) English Essayist
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
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
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 (1898–1956) German Poet, Playwright, Theater Personality
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
The most important thing in acting is honesty. Once you’ve learned to fake that, you’re in.
—Samuel Goldwyn (1879–1974) Polish-born American Film Producer, Businessperson
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
Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.
—Wayne Dyer (b.1940) American Motivational Writer, Author, Motivational Speaker
In the long run, avoiding activity that might hurt causes more agony than acting, failing, and dealing with the pain.
—Unknown
Heaven ne’er helps the man who will not act.
—Sophocles (495–405 BCE) Ancient Greek Dramatist
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
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
Acting is a question of absorbing other people’s personalities and adding some of your own experience.
—Paul Newman (1925–2008) American Actor, Philanthropist
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
Someplace along the line the audience discovered you. In my case it was playing the Gipper.
—Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American Head of State
Acting doesn’t bring anything to a text. On the contrary, it detracts from it.
—Marguerite Duras (1914–96) French Novelist, Playwright
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
He used this great, sad, motionless face to suggest various related things: a one-track mind near the track’s end of pure insanity; mulish imperturbability under the wildest of circumstances; how dead a human being can get and still be alive…
—James Agee (1909–55) American Journalist, Poet, Screenwriter, Film Critic
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
Acting is a nice childish profession – pretending you’re someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself.
—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
A true priest is aware of the presence of the altar during every moment that he is conducting a service. It is exactly the same way that a true artist should react to the stage all the time he is in the theater. An actor who is incapable of this feeling will never be a true artist.
—Constantin Stanislavski (1863–1938) Russian Actor, Theater Personality
Remember: there are no small parts, only small actors.
—Constantin Stanislavski (1863–1938) Russian Actor, Theater Personality
We become actors without realizing it, and actors without wanting to.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (1821–81) Swiss Moral Philosopher, Poet, Critic
I’m not an actress who can create a character. I play me.
—Mary Tyler Moore (b.1936) American Actor, TV Personality
Until Ace Ventura, no actor had considered talking through his ass.
—Jim Carrey (b.1962) Canadian Actor, Comedian
Actors are the only honest hypocrites. Their life is a voluntary dream; and the height of their ambition is to be beside themselves. They wear the livery of other men’s fortunes: their very thoughts are not their own.
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
—Edmund Burke (1729–97) British Philosopher, Statesman
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
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 (b.1946) American Actor, Film Director, Screenwriter
The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting.
—Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British Actor
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 (1914–96) French Novelist, Playwright
It isn’t enough to think outside the box. Thinking is passive. Get used to acting outside the box.
—Tim Ferriss (b.1977) American Self-help Author
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
A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.
—Jane Fonda (b.1937) American Actress, Political Activist
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 took acting away from me, I’d stop breathing.
—Ingrid Bergman (1915–82) Swedish Actor