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 Stanislavski (1863–1938) Russian Actor, Theater Personality
I have to act to live.
—Laurence Olivier (1907–89) English Actor, Producer, Director
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
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
To see him act is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
In the long run, avoiding activity that might hurt causes more agony than acting, failing, and dealing with the pain.
—Unknown
The audience is not the least important actor in the play, and if it will not do its allotted share the play falls to pieces.
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
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
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
The essence of intelligence is skill in extracting meaning from everyday experience.
—Unknown
Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
—George Burns (1896–1996) American Comedian
Acting is not being emotional, but being able to express emotion.
—Thomas Reid (1710–96) Scottish Philosopher, Clergyman
The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting.
—Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British Actor
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.
—Konstantin Stanislavski (1863–1938) Russian Actor, Theater Personality
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’m not an actress who can create a character. I play me.
—Mary Tyler Moore (b.1936) American Actor, TV Personality
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
The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.
—Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) American Clergyman, Writer
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
And because we are creatures of habit, we must practice. I urge you to practice acting in spite of fear, practice acting in spite of inconvenience, practice acting in spite of discomfort, and practice acting even when you’re not in the mood.
—T. Harv Eker (b.1954) American Motivational Speaker, Lecturer, Author
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
We must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all.
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist
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
Someplace along the line the audience discovered you. In my case it was playing the Gipper.
—Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American Head of State
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
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
Some people are addicts. If they don’t act, they don’t exist.
—Jeanne Moreau (1928–2017) French Stage, Screen Actor, Singer
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
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
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