Famous Quotes about Acting and Actors (142 Quotations)

There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.

They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.

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.

This is not a tough job. You read a script. If you like the part and the money is O.K., you do it. Then you remember your lines. You show up on time. You do what the director tells you to do. When you finish, you rest and then go on to the next part. That's it.

To grasp the full significance of life is the actor's duty, to interpret it is his problem, and to express it his dedication.

To see him act is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.

Unless the theatre can ennoble you, make you a better person, you should flee from it.

Until Ace Ventura, no actor had considered talking through his ass.

We are born at the rise of the curtain and we die with its fall, and every night in the presence of our patrons we write our new creation, and every night it is blotted out forever; and of what use is it to say to audience or to critic, ''Ah, but you should have seen me last Tuesday?''

We become actors without realizing it, and actors without wanting to.

We must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all.

When an actor has money, he doesn't send letters, but telegrams.

When I was a fireman I was in a lot of burning buildings. It was a great job, the only job I ever had that compares with the thrill of acting. Before going into a fire, there's the same surge of adrenaline you get just before the camera rolls.

While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.

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.

You are not in business to be popular.

You can't do four movies and be good to everybody and be flying all night and shooting all day with a different wig and then be going to sing on Broadway without feeling a little tired. You endlessly feel you're letting somebody down.

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.

You know how in high school you do these plays and people come up after the show and they're really excited for you? Well, that's what's happening to me right now.

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.