They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist
Acting provides the fulfillment of never being fulfilled. You’re never as good as you’d like to be. So there’s always something to hope for.
—Glenda Jackson (1936–2023) British Actress, Politician
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
I am acquainted with no immaterial sensuality so delightful as good acting.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
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
It is not whether you really cry. It’s whether the audience thinks you are crying.
—Ingrid Bergman (1915–82) Swedish Film and Stage Actress
Unless the theatre can ennoble you, make you a better person, you should flee from it.
—Konstantin Stanislavski (1863–1938) Russian Actor, Theater Personality
Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.
—Roger Moore (1927–2017) English Actor
An actor rides in a bus or railroad train; he sees a movement and applies it to a new role. The whole garment in which the actor hides himself is made of small externals of observation fitted to his conception of a role.
—Eleanor Robson Belmont (1879–1979) American Actress, Philanthropist
Until Ace Ventura, no actor had considered talking through his ass.
—Jim Carrey (b.1962) Canadian Actor, Comedian, Producer
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 actor searches vainly for the sound of a vanished tradition, and critic and audience follow suit. We have lost all sense of ritual and ceremony—whether it be connected with Christmas, birthdays or funerals—but the words remain with us and old impulses stir in the marrow. We feel we should have rituals, we should do something about getting them and we blame the artists for not finding them for us. So the artist sometimes attempts to find new rituals with only his imagination as his source: he imitates the outer form of ceremonies, pagan or baroque, unfortunately adding his own trapping—the result is rarely convincing. And after the years and years of weaker and waterier imitations we now find ourselves rejecting the very notion of a holy stage. It is not the fault of the holy that it has become a middle-class weapon to keep the children good.
—Peter Brook (1925–2022) English Theatre and Film Director
I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that’s printed about him.
—Orson Welles (1915–85) American Film Director, 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
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 Entertainer, Singer, Dancer
Actors die so loud.
—Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist
You must have this charm to reach the pinnacle. It is made of everything and of nothing, the striving will, the look, the walk, the proportions of the body sound of the voice, the ease of the gestures. It is not at all necessary to be handsome or to be pretty; all that is needful is charm.
—Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923) French Actress
Remember: there are no small parts, only small actors.
—Konstantin Stanislavski (1863–1938) Russian Actor, Theater Personality
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
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
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
A good actor must never be in love with anyone but himself.
—Jean Anouilh (1910–87) French Dramatist
When [actors] are talking, they are servants of the dramatist. It is what they can show the audience when they are not talking that reveals the fine actor.
—Cedric Hardwicke (1893–1964) English Stage, Film Actor
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
Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.
—Jeff Goldblum (b.1952) American Actor, Musician
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
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
Compare the cinema with theatre. Both are dramatic arts. Theatre brings actors before a public and every night during the season they re-enact the same drama. Deep in the nature of theatre is a sense of ritual. The cinema, by contrast, transports its audience individually, singly, out of the theatre towards the unknown.
—John Berger (1926–2017) English Art Critic, Novelist
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
Leave a Reply