Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that’s printed about him.
—Orson Welles (1915–85) American Film Director, Actor
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.
—Constantin Stanislavski (1863–1938) Russian Actor, Theater Personality
Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way. We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
We must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all.
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist
If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.
—Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) American Actor, TV 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
They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist
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
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
I was born at the age of twelve on a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot.
—Judy Garland (1922–69) American Actress, Singer
In the long run, avoiding activity that might hurt causes more agony than acting, failing, and dealing with the pain.
—Unknown
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
Life is like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
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 is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
—George Burns (1896–1996) American Comedian
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 (1902–68) American 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
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
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
I do not want actors and actresses to understand my plays. That is not necessary. If they will only pronounce the correct sounds I can guarantee the results.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
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
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
When I first went into the movies Lionel Barrymore played my grandfather. Later he played my father and finally my husband. If he had lived, I’m sure I would have played his mother. That’s the way it is in Hollywood. The men get younger and the women get older.
—Lillian Gish (1896–1993) American Actress
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
I never said all actors are cattle, what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.
—Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British-born American Film Director, Film Producer
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
Acting is not being emotional, but being able to express emotion.
—Thomas Reid (1710–96) Scottish Philosopher, Clergyman
When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.
—Cynthia Heimel (1947–2018) American Humor Columnist, Feminist
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
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.
—Paul Newman (1925–2008) American Actor, Philanthropist
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
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 (1919–2004) German-American Actress
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
Actors die so loud.
—Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist
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
To grasp the full significance of life is the actor’s duty, to interpret it is his problem, and to express it his dedication.
—Marlon Brando (1924–2004) American Film, Stage Actor
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
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
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.
—Rodney Dangerfield (1921–2004) American Comedian, TV Personality, Actor
A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.
—Jane Fonda (b.1937) American Actress, Political Activist
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
No one is truly free, they are a slave to wealth, fortune, the law, or other people restraining them from acting according to their will.
—Euripides (480–406 BCE) Ancient Greek Dramatist
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
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
—Edmund Burke (1729–97) British Philosopher, Statesman
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
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 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
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
She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American Humorist, Journalist