All people are half actors. — Dana Andrews
Ideas without action are worthless. — Harvey Mackay
To be an actor you have to be a child. — Paul Newman
Acting is the perfect idiot’s profession. — Katharine Hepburn
Acting is about being real, being honest. — Kate Winslet
She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B. — Dorothy Parker
The best actors do not let the wheels show. — Milan Kundera
If I wasn’t an actor, I’d be a secret agent. — Thornton Wilder
Being pigeonholed is the death of all actors. — Jack Nicholson
There is a need for aloneness… for an actor. — Marilyn Monroe
An actor has to burn inside with an outer ease. — Michael Chekhov
The great end of life is not knowledge but action. — Thomas Huxley
I love acting, truly my favorite people are actors. — Sean Penn
Remember: there are no small parts, only small actors. — Constantin Stanislavski
I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms. — Thornton Wilder
The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn an Event. — Ethel Barrymore
Poetry has, in a way, been my bridge to my acting career. — Omari Hardwick
The real actor has a direct line to the collective heart. — Sam Rayburn
A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting. — Carlos Castaneda
There’s a fine line between the Method actor and the schizophrenic. — Nicolas Cage
If you catch me saying ‘I am a serious actor,’ I beg you to slap me. — Johnny Depp
We become actors without realizing it, and actors without wanting to. — Henri Frederic Amiel
There’s a whole catalogue of actors that never went to acting school. — Dennis Farina
Only a great actor finds the difficulties of the actor’s art infinite. — Ellen Terry
The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen. — W. H. Auden
Acting is not being emotional, but being able to fully express emotion. — Kate Reid
If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you. — William Hazlitt
The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting. — Charlie Chaplin
Actors search for rejection. If they don’t get it they reject themselves. — Charlie Chaplin
Singers come and go, but if you’re a good actor, you can last a long time. — Elvis Presley
I am acquainted with no immaterial sensuality so delightful as good acting. — Lord Byron
Acting doesn’t bring anything to a text. On the contrary, it detracts from it. — Elaine Dundy
Acting after being asked is compliance. Acting without being asked is kindness. — Ron Kaufman
Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation. — Bette Davis
Acting is an art and a science and there is more to me then that young blonde kid. — Michael Welch
The great actors are the luminous ones. They are the great conductors of the stage. — Ethel Barrymore
Celebrity is death – celebrity – that’s the worst thing that can happen to an actor. — Glenn Close
Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go. — Natalie Goldberg
A good director creates an environment which gives the actor the encouragement to fly. — Kevin Bacon
The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis. — Marlon Brando
It is easy to sit up and take notice, What is difficult is getting up and taking action. — Honore de Balzac
They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness. — William Hazlitt
When I read ‘Be real, don’t get caught acting,’ I thought, ‘How the hell do you do that?’. — Billy Connolly
Actors often behave like children, and so we’re taken for children. I want to be grown up. — Jeremy Irons
Acting is illusion, as much illusion as magic is – and not so much a matter of being real. — Laurence Olivier
I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle. — Alfred Hitchcock
All an actor has is their blind faith that they are who they say they are today, in any scene. — Meryl Streep
I’d like to think there’ll be too much of real life going on for me to want to do much acting. — Julie Walters
“Leadership is demonstrated at the moment of need.
You learn to be a leader by acting, by doing” — Carlos Ghosn
Actors should be overheard, not listened to, and the audience is 50 percent of the performance. — Shirley Booth
I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don’t remember ever having seen one weep. — Bette Davis
I fell in love with theater there, and after graduation I moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting. — Olivia Wilde
Conflict is what creates drama. The more conflict actors find, the more interesting the performance. — Michael Shurtleff
Acting is a question of absorbing other people’s personalities and adding some of your own experience. — Jean-Paul Sartre
If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable. — Jack Lemmon
There is some sadness for me now about acting because it used to be that there was a reverence for actors. — Estelle Parsons
While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance. — Oscar Wilde
(Acting) certainly comes-100 percent-from the need to be loved. Any actor who says this isn’t true is lying. — Leonardo DiCaprio
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
If you want to be an actor, you have to do it because you love acting, not because you want to be a celebrity. — Alfonso Ribeiro
When we know ourselves to be connected to all others, acting compassionately is simply the natural thing to do. — Rachel Naomi Remen
An expression of feeling isn’t worth anything unless it interferes with what the other actor in the scene wants. — Michael Shurtleff
Every scene you will ever act begins in the middle, and it is up to you, the actor, to provide what comes before. — Michael Shurtleff
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
Besides acting which is my first love, I am also interested in behind the scenes.. Directing , writing and producing. — Josh Flitter
I went to acting school, but only for nine months. If you’re an actor, you know, don’t really need to learn how to do it. — Patrick Macnee
Wisdom – meaning judgment acting on experience, common sense, available knowledge, and a decent appreciation of probability. — Barbara Tuchman
If you’re an actor, always be true to your character. If you are not an actor, have character and always be true to yourself. — Robert De Niro
In terms of acting, we go through phases of being really inspired by film and television and actors and works that we’ve read. — Laura Vandervoort
If you get a chance to act in a room that somebody else has paid rent for, then you’re given a free chance to practice your craft. — Philip Seymour Hoffman
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
They are very good reasons why voice acting in games can be so terrible. Writers are in a great position to be able to bridge this gap. — Rhianna Pratchett
To me, acting is the most logical way for people’s neuroses to manifest themselves, in this great need we all have to express ourselves. — James Dean
Next to an old-fashioned church social, or possibly a monster bridge party, there is no buzz which can equal the sibilant buzz ofa matinée. — Robert Benchley
Have a bias toward action – let’s see something happen now. You can break that big plan into small steps and take the first step right away. — Indira Gandhi
Acting was never my first choice as a profession, but I came to terms with it when I decided I better buckle down and be the best I can be at it. — Mickey Rourke
There’s nothing more boring than unintelligent actors, because all they have to talk about is themselves and acting. There have to be other things. — Tim Robbins
Look, it’s one of the great mysteries of the world, I cannot answer that question. I think I’m vaguely blonde. To be perfectly frank, I don’t know. — Cate Blanchett
I never thought I’d be making a living off of acting – it’s still kind of a shock for my family and friends to see my face on TV every Wednesday night. — Matthew Gray Gubler
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
Well, acting is cheap; I knew all these actors who weren’t in the Screen Actors Guild yet, and it happened that they were all just about thirty years old. — John Sayles
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
And in that moment, everything I knew to be true about myself up until then was gone. I was acting like another woman, yet I was more myself than ever before. — Robert James Waller
I do not know if it is true that all actors want to direct and all directors want to act, but in 1972 I tried directing and decided I had better stick to acting. — James Earl Jones
I can disappear into things very easily. But with acting, you have to be in the moment, and it gives me this incredibly fulfilling emotion: being really present. — Troy Garity
I imagined that being someday in pro ball I would have been Kevin Costner in Bull Durham. If I had never discovered acting, I literally would have been that guy. — Tyler Hoechlin
Some stars like to hide behind the whole idea of acting. But really good actors are not hiding at all. They’re not afraid to be disliked, to be a little unsavory. — Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio
I realized that acting was the thing I was still maybe the best at. Of the things I felt like I was good at, that was the thing that came the most naturally to me. — Joseph Mazzello
I’m surrounded by friends and family who are not that impressed by celebrity. They don’t have any problem telling me I’m acting like an idiot or I’m not that funny. — Paloma Faith
An actor is totally vulnerable. His total personality is exposed to critical judgment – his intellect, his bearing, his diction, his whole appearance. In short, his ego. — Alec Guinness
I wanted to play a TV detective because it’s a rite of passage; I wanted to experience every area of acting. I haven’t done comedy or as much Shakespeare as I had intended. — Olivia Williams
We, in the late ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, are acting like we have just discovered freedom and liberation. But I’m sure that many women have worked for that for such a long time. — Angeles Mastretta
Actors ought to be larger than life. You come across quite enough ordinary, nondescript people in daily life and I don’t see why you should be subjected to them on the stage too. — Ninon de L’Enclos
An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so must be willing to accept all the experiences life has to offer. In fact, he must seek out more of life than life puts at his feet. — James Dean
Competition [in a scene] is healthy. Competition is life. Yet most actors refuse to acknowledge this. They don’t want to compete. They want to get along. And they are therefore not first-rate actors. — Michael Shurtleff
Poetry has in a way been my bridge to my acting career. I had so many questions about my life, so I took to poetry to express my questions. I had questions about politics, family relationships, and more. — Omari Hardwick
Acting Government officials, they said they wanted – they would be happy, they would love to put a bullet in my head, to poison me as I was returning from the grocery store, and have me die in the shower. — Edward Snowden
Theatre, in which actors take on changing roles, has among its many functions the examination of identity. For the individual, theatre is a kind of identity laboratory in which social roles can be examined vicariously. — Richard Hornby
The thing about anything in life is you have to get ready for it. Study, learn and in terms of acting, there’s a lot to learn. The bigger culture you have in life, the better actor you’ll be. You’ll have more to pull on. — Jacqueline Bisset
Movie acting, I later realized, reminds me of contract bridge. Each requires the same concentration, intense short-term memory, and obliviousness to everything else until the last trump is called – or whatever it is they do. — Gore Vidal
When you spend your life acting and being other people, as opposed to being the one person that you are, you learn that life is gray sometimes, not black and white. That what you thought was true isn’t necessarily true if you switch sides. — Sydney Pollack
The acting that one sees upon the stage does not show how human beings comport themselves in crises, but how actors think they ought to. It is thus, like poetry and religion, a device for gladdening the heart with what is palpably not true. — H. L. Mencken
If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable. [You must] reach the emotional and intellectual level of ability where you can go out stark naked, emotionally, in front of an audience. — Jack Lemmon
My illusions didn’t have anything to do with being a fine actress. I knew how third rate I was. I could actually feel my lack of talent, as if it were cheap clothes I was wearing inside. But, my God, how I wanted to learn, to change, to improve! — Marilyn Monroe
The inner life of the [imagination], and not the personal and tiny experiential resources of the actor, should be elaborated on the stage and shown to the audience. This life is rich and revealing for the audience as well as for the actor himself. — Michael Chekhov
I don’t know what its like for most actors, but really clearly for myself acting has always been the fulfillment of personal fantasies. It isn’t just art, its about being a person I’ve always wanted to be, or being in a situation, or being a hero. — Richard Dreyfuss
It’s difficult, if not impossible, to get away with anything false before the camera. That instrument penetrates the husk of the actor; it reveals what’s truly happening – if anything, if nothing. A close-up demands absolute truth. It’s a severe and awesome truth — Elia Kazan
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
Don’t watch people’s individual performances. Watch the energy that’s being passed between them, and then you’ll see if the scene is really working or if the actors are really doing their job. If they’re playing with the energy that’s between them, they’re not just acting in their own little bubble. — Barbara Crampton
I’m at least getting my foot in the door as far as doing straight dramatic parts, which no one would have ever considered me for in the ’80s. I never objected to that because I love doing comedy, and I’m not the kind of actor that insists that unless you’re doing a serious dramatic role, you’re not acting. — Curtis Armstrong
Our everyday self is a narrow construct…Our total self is far broader, ultimately infinite. Actors who seem to be playing themselves are actually playing roles they have become so skillful at that they seem pure and natural…Much bad Acting is the result of being too close to the Actor’s everyday self, confining him in its rigid mold. — Richard Hornby
We must all acknowledge our unconscious biases, and listen with less bias when women, and others who are marginalized, speak out. A lot of change is possible by just acknowledging unconscious bias – that exhaustively documented but unpleasant reality many would rather ignore – and listening with less bias and acting on what we then learn. — Tara Moss
I never studied. I was too afraid. I thought that if an acting teacher had said to me, “You know what, you’re not good,” I would not have gone any further. It was easier for me to justify going to an audition and getting rejected, maybe because they wanted somebody blonde, maybe because I wasn’t experienced enough. I could live with that more easily. — Demi Moore
I had never done anything with blue screen before, or prosthetics, or anything like that. Lord of the Rings was like stepping into a videogame for me. It was another world completely. But, to be honest, I basically did it so that I could have the ears. I thought they would really work with my bare head.Working with Martin Scorsese was an absolute minute-by-minute education without him ever being grandiose about it. — Cate Blanchett
You know I grew up on the Batman movies, and they had some terrific actors in, but you know a lot of the other ones – it wasn’t always the case that you had people the caliber of Jeff Bridges or Robert Downey, so to kind of show up and work with Jeremy Renner or Robert or with Mark Ruffalo, any of them, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, the caliber of people you’re acting with, to me, is really fun. From the first day I started doing scenes with Robert, it’s been one of the funnest experiences I’ve ever had. — Clark Gregg
