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
Contentment Actors And Acting quotations
An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so he must be willing to accept all experiences that life can offer.
Work for the actor lies essentially in two areas: the ability to consistently create reality and the ability to express that reality.
Acting in a scene is like paddling a canoe from a pebbly beach on to the river, the writer builds the canoe, and the actor provides the river. The river is the actor's thoughts and emotions.
Remember: there are no small parts, only small actors.
One of the things I like about my profession, and that I find healthy, is that one constantly has to break oneself to pieces.
Plastic surgery and breast implants are fine for people who want that, if it makes them feel better about who they are. But, it makes these people, actors especially, fantasy figures for a fantasy world. Acting is about being real being honest.
Everyone has a different path. I knew no one in the acting industry growing up. I never did a play until college. I was not outspoken when I was younger and I hated being the center of attention. But I had a dream of being an actor. I went to NYU and studied theatre. I learned a craft. And began my career straight out of college.
The number one thing I am earnestly attracted to is intelligence.
Writers are thus the pinnacle of intelligence. While actors are great and awesome, writers literally create new worlds from scratch. What is sexier than that? Personally, I don't know why every person out there isn't dating a writer.
I always wanted to be an actor, but with a speech impediment it's kind of tough.
I decided to roll the dice and take an acting class, which was very, very nerve-wracking... my stomach would just be in knots.
I just let the work speak for itself.
An actor is not afraid to take risks; to put on different hats; to be a good guy, a bad guy, a victim, an abuser. There are all kinds of people in the world, and playing them is what acting is all about.
An actor is at his best a kind of unfrocked priest who, for an hour or two, can call on heaven and hell to mesmerize a group of innocents.
I think every American actor wants to be a movie star.
But I never wanted to do stupid movies, I wanted to do films. I vowed I would never do a commercial, nor would I do a soap opera -- both of which I did as soon as I left the Acting Company and was starving.
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.
For minority actors, developing our own projects has to be the eventual path.
We have a lot of stories to tell and a really unique voice. But none of that is going to be heard as long as we're just the hired hands, acting.
Acting is not being emotional, but being able to fully express emotion.
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.
Acting is all about big hair and funny props.
.. All the great actors knew it. Olivier knew it, Brando knew it.
The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis.
Just be truthful - and if you can fake that, you've got it made.
If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable.
I like the character roles. Somewhere back there I really came to the conclusion in my mind that the difference between acting and stardom was major. And that if you become a star, people are going to go to see you. If you remain an actor, they're going to go and see the story you're in.
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women mearly players.
In my opinion, animation is best when it communicates without words, because it is the perfect medium through which to make shortcuts to meaning. When actors are not talking, just acting out, it looks kind of weird. But in animation, mime is constant, and you accept it.
Ibsen is like this room where we are sitting, with all the tables and chairs.
Do I care whether you have twenty or twenty-five links on your chain? Hedda Gabler, Nora and the rest: it is not that I want! I want Rome and the Coliseum, the Acropolis, Athens; I want beauty, and the flame of life.
Make sure you live life, which means don't do things where you court celebrity, and give something positive back to our society.
My rule is you want someone whos got both feet on the ground.
An ideal girlfriend might be someone who works in the business and can understand what youre going through but is not an actor themselves - is willing to run lines with you but when you start acting crazy, they throw up their hands and take you for what you are and be accepting.
Listen, acting is not surgery, it's entertainment.
You're doing something to hopefully move people, to make them laugh, to transport them. But actors are vulnerable, and the reason we're vulnerable is that we're always trying to recreate human behaviour.
The dramatic art would appear to be rather a feminine art;
it contains in itself all the artifices which belong to the province ofwoman: the desire to please, facility to express emotions and hide defects, and the faculty of assimilation which is the real essence of woman.
Without discipline and detachment, an actor is an emotional slob, spilling his insides out. This abandonment is having an unfortunate vogue. It is tasteless, formless, absurd. Without containment there is no art. All this vomiting and wheezing and bursting at the seams is no more great acting than the convulsions of raving maniacs.
For acting, darlings, is the world's most perilous trade.
Compared with actors, steeple jacks and deep-sea divers lead snug and placid lives.
Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.
When somebody who makes movies for a living - either as an actor, writer, producer or director - lives to be a certain age, you have to admire them. It is an act of courage to make a film - a courage for which you are not prepared in the rest of life. It is very hard and very destructive. But we do it because we love it.
Actors are basically drag queens. People will tell you they act because they want to heal mankind or, you know, explore the nature of the human psyche. Yes, maybe. But basically we just want to put on a frock and dance.
Acting is not about being someone different.
It's finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there.