180 Actors Quotes

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Famous Actors Quotes

Film actors reach a certain level, but they don't get beyond it unless they work in the theater. β€” Shirley Knight

Actors are agents of change. A film, a piece of theater, a piece of music, or a book can make a difference. It can change the world. β€” Alan Rickman

Actors are rogues and vagabonds. Or they ought to be. β€” Helen Mirren

I think every American actor wants to be a movie star. But I never wanted to do stupid movies, I wanted to do films. β€” Kevin Kline

A film is a director's vision... there is, however, much input an actor or actress can have. β€” Natasha Richardson

The average Hollywood film star's ambition is to be admired by an American, courted by an Italian, married to an Englishman and have a French boyfriend. β€” Katharine Hepburn

The real actor has a direct line to the collective heart. β€” Bette Davis

There was more good acting at Hollywood parties than ever appeared on the screen. β€” Bette Davis

The life of an action star is very short. I want to be an actor like Robert De Niro , like Dustin Hoffman or Clint Eastwood who in their 70s or 80s can still act. β€” Jackie Chan

You can think of Hollywood as high school. TV actors are freshmen, comedy actors are maybe juniors, and dramatic actors - they're the cool seniors. β€” Owen Wilson

You can always pick out stage actors at the Oscars: they know how to walk. β€” Ian Mckellen

I think film and television are really a director's medium, whereas theatre is the actor's medium. β€” Christopher Eccleston

There is a strange pecking order among actors. Theatre actors look down on film actors, who look down on TV actors. Thank God for reality shows, or we wouldn't have anybody to look down on. β€” George Clooney

An actor is an actor is an actor. The less personality an actor has off stage the better. A blank canvas on which to draw the characters he plays. β€” Arthur Lowe

Actors should arouse a sense of wonder because of their ability to exceed what the spectators can envision ever being able to do. β€” Jerzy Grotowski

Short Actors Quotes

  • Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances. β€” Sanford Meisner
  • Unless the theatre can ennoble you, make you a better person, you should flee from it. β€” Constantin Stanislavski
  • You'll never see any two good actors approach a role in the same way. β€” Constantin Stanislavski
  • I want to be one of the biggest social media stars ever to become an actor. β€” Jake Paul
  • We're improv comedians, we're not necessarily actors, we don't come across that way. β€” Joe Gatto
  • Remember: there are no small parts, only small actors. β€” Konstantin Stanislavisky
  • A magician is only an actor - an actor pretending to be a magician. β€” Harry Houdini
  • Remember: there are no small parts, only small actors. β€” Constantin Stanislavski
  • You have film actors doing TV, rap stars doing TV, with everyone kind of crossing the line. β€” Anthony Michael Hall
  • When I was a kid, if a guy got killed in a western movie I always wondered who got his horse. β€” George Carlin

Actors Image Quotes

I have always been a Malibu Man, like all actors. - Nick Mancuso quote

I have always been a Malibu Man, like all actors. β€” Nick Mancuso

If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent. - Elijah Wood quote

If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent. β€” Elijah Wood

You grow up in a Sicilian household, becoming an actor is not a big leap. - Vincent Schiavelli quote

You grow up in a Sicilian household, becoming an actor is not a big leap. β€” Vincent Schiavelli

Disney has the best casting. If he doesn't like an actor he just tears him up. - Alfred Hitchcock quote

Disney has the best casting. If he doesn't like an actor he just tears him up. β€” Alfred Hitchcock

Find in yourself those human things which are universal. - Sanford Meisner quote

Find in yourself those human things which are universal. β€” Sanford Meisner

Actors quote When an actor marries an actress they both fight for the mirror.
When an actor marries an actress they both fight for the mirror.

Film Actors Quotes

My cameraman and I devised a method, which we started using from my second film, which applies mainly to day scenes shot in the studio, where we used bounced light instead of direct light. We agreed with this thing of four or five shadows following the actors is dreadful. β€” Satyajit Ray

The thing about film-making is I give it everything, that's why I work so hard. I always tell young actors to take charge. It's not that hard. Sign your own cheques, be responsible. β€” Tom Cruise

A government institution called the Finnish Film Foundation funds filmmaking there, and I wrote several screenplays but never got any money. They were sent back to me, and they said that they were too commercial for them. β€” Renny Harlin

Eventually, in '84, we made a film for a little over a million dollars - with American actors that was shot in English - that was shown in Finland A little action film called Born American. β€” Renny Harlin

I like the sensibility of Australian film a lot and the crews are fantastic. Great characters, wonderful people and no line between - I think in Hollywood they have this line between actors and crew a lot, and that just didn't exist, which I really appreciated. β€” Barbara Hershey

Most of the top actors and actresses may be working in ten or twelve films at the same time, so they will give one director two hours and maybe shoot in Bombay in the morning and Madras in the evening. It happens. β€” Satyajit Ray

I'm an actor, and I don't look at myself as providing comic relief. I have done diverse and dark roles such as a psycho, murderer, and others in films such as 'Don', 'Eklavya' and '3 Idiots.' β€” Boman Irani

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. β€” Kevin Kline

To me if there's an achievement to lighting and photography in a film it's because nothing stands out, it all works as a piece. And you feel that these actors are in this situation and the audience is not thrown by a pretty picture or by bad lighting. β€” Roger Deakins

I don't think God's going to judge me based on my film work - although I hope he has a sense of humour and I hope he's a fan of movies because I've done some things that may be questionable in his eyes as an actor! β€” Mark Wahlberg

Movie Actors Quotes

Get real. You are not the star of the movie. Most of what happens around you isn’t about you at all. There are infinite numbers of other movies. In those, if you feature at all, you’re just a supporting actor. It would really help your happiness if you started to look at your life that way. β€” Mo Gawdat

I'm a frustrated actor. My ... goal is to beat Alfred Hitchcock in the number of cameos. I'm going to try to break his record. β€” Stan Lee

I don't know what your childhood was like, but we didn't have much money. We'd go to a movie on a Saturday night, then on Wednesday night my parents would walk us over to the library. It was such a big deal, to go in and get my own book. β€” Robert Redford

The big-budget blockbuster is becoming one of the most dependable forms of filmmaking. β€” Peter Jackson

When you do an animated movie - at least the ones that I've been a part of - you never see any of the other actors. It's all done separately with headphones in a voice booth. β€” Steve Carell

Every other movie is one of those action things. I mean, 'Lost in Space'? A bunch of good actors running around shooting at special effects on a soundstage? I took my kids to see that and felt like I was on an acid trip. β€” Tom Berenger

I don't watch the movies I make, so I haven't seen 'Footloose' since it came out. You see this young, hungry actor, it's pretty fun. I was the only one they screen tested. It was an attempt by the director and producer to talk the head of the studio into hiring me because they didn't want me. β€” Kevin Bacon

But I don't have such a strong desire to need to get away from filmmaking. β€” Mike Figgis

Whether it is the cavemen in the caves thousands of years ago, Shakespeare plays, television, movies and books, stories and characters take us on a journey. All I do is tell those stories without scripts and without actors. β€” Mark Burnett

One of the things I have an allergic reaction to playing, especially as a black actor, is the mandatory kind of best friend/cop/detective type. You will never see me in that movie. β€” David Oyelowo

Film Stars Quotes

May the Force be with you. - George Lucas

May the Force be with you. β€” George Lucas

Since Star Wars, that film's success led to bigger budgets, more hardware, that the great movies like the ones I did, which were studio movies, are now independent movies. They range from half a million to several million, and a lot of those have very interesting roles. β€” Faye Dunaway

Doing that, then doing a lot of theater, which I love. Doing guest stars, did two independent films that are going around to all these festivals. Both of them are going to be at the Lake Tahoe Film Festival. β€” Austin Peck

Where men are forbidden to honour a king, they honor millionaires, athletes, or film stars instead; even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison. β€” C. S. Lewis

The first script was one of six original stories I had written in the form of two trilogies. After the success of Star Wars, I added another trilogy. So now there are nine stories. The original two trilogies were conceived of as six films of which the first film was number four. β€” George Lucas

In an ideal world, it would not take a film star to get the media focused on mental illness. β€” Alastair Campbell

There is no other occupation in the world that so closely resembled enslavement as the career of a film star. β€” Louise Brooks

I'd rather be smart than a movie star. β€” Natalie Portman

When I was filming 'The Haunting Hour', my co-stars Emily Osment, Brittany Curran and I paid a visit to a haunted house - all dressed up as vampires! We really confused the workers. β€” Cody Linley

I was 13 - 14 when I first tasted stardom. In the summer holidays, my dad made me act in these films that went on to become superhits. I became a child star. β€” Mahesh Babu

Actors And Actresses Quotes

I think it's even harder because I think as always, Hollywood is sort of glamour central for the world, and the entire world looks to it for not only entertainment, but the whole idea of the youth factor and youth being sold to our culture via young actors and actresses. β€” Anthony Michael Hall

I like every single actor or actress in the world, because we never know what the conditions are like when they are working. I give everyone the benefit of the doubt and root for them like a psychotic sports fan β€” Judd Nelson

I just feel incredibly lucky to be employed when there are so many actors and actresses who are not employed. That's why, you know, I sometimes feel desperate, in case I'm not going to be cast again. β€” Judi Dench

Sure I faced the troubles and challenges that most actors and actresses face until they get noticed, but I was always confident of myself and my capabilities. β€” Christine Lahti

The political arena is the funniest.They [politicians] are always pretending to change, but they never change. They're the best actors and actresses in the world. They've always been hilarious since the beginning of time. β€” Paul Mooney

Show me a great actor and I'll show you a lousy husband. Show me a great actress, and you've seen the devil. β€” W. C. Fields

Acting is not about being someone different. It's finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there. β€” Meryl Streep

Actors and actresses who say they never go to see their own pictures are talking through their hats. You don't have to be a Freud to know that the most fascinating person in the world - actors or anybody - is yourself. β€” Paulette Goddard

I am admiring of my fellow peers, black filmmakers and black actors and actresses. β€” Cuba Gooding, Jr.

Speaking as an actress, I wish all actors would be more like Duke Wayne. And speaking as a person, it would be nice if all people could be honest and as genuine as he is. This is a real man. β€” Maureen O'Hara

Theatre Actors Quotes

Preparing a character is the opposite of building-it is a demolishing, removing brick by brick everything in the actor's muscles, ideas and inhibitions that stands between him and the part, until one day, with a great rush of air, the character invades his every pore. β€” Peter Brook

An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so he must be willing to accept all experiences that life can offer. β€” Marlon Brando

We can compare classical chess and rapid chess with theatre and cinema - some actors don't like the latter and prefer to work in the theatre. β€” Boris Spassky

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. β€” Alec Guinness

I believe in the time when we shall be able to create works of art in the Theatre without the use of the written play, without the use of actors. β€” Edward Gordon Craig

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. β€” Tim Robbins

An actor without techies is a naked person standing in the dark trying to emote. A techie without actors is a person with marketable skills. β€” Mark Leslie

Acting is not being emotional, but being able to fully express emotion. β€” Kate Reid

I never had any classes or went to theatre school like a lot of actors, so all of my training has been on stage with different directors. That was a pretty good school room. β€” James Denton

You need three things in the theatre - the play, the actors and the audience, and each must give something. β€” Kenneth Haigh

Great Actors Quotes

I'm living every ten-year-old boy's fantasy. The other day, Chris and I had this big scene where we had to pull out our guns, and I was thinking, 'Here we are in New York City - a place where every actor wants to be - and we are literally playing cops and robbers. How great is that?' β€” Mariska Hargitay

When the drama of history is over, Jesus Christ will stand alone on the stage. All the great figures of history ... will realize that they have been but actors in a drama produced by another. β€” Helmut Thielicke

An actor is never so great as when he reminds you of an animal - falling like a cat, lying like a dog, moving like a fox. β€” Francois Truffaut

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. β€” Rachel Bloom

If you are a great dramatic actor then you often don't know if people are enjoying your stuff at all because they are sitting there in silence. But with comedy it's a simple premise. If it's funny, people laugh. If it's not, they don't. β€” Steve Coogan

My advice has always been to study the craft of acting if you want to be an actor. There are many great schools that teach acting. NYU being one of them. β€” Peter Facinelli

When I played Robin Hood, I knew the great role was Alan Rickman's and it didn't bother me. I always think that leading actors should be called the best supporting actors. β€” Kevin Costner

I am hoping that I can be known as a great writer and actor some day, rather than a sex symbol. β€” Steven Seagal

Drinking coffee is kinda my major hobby... the great benefit of being an actor is you have all this spare time. My ideal is just hanging out with people - I think I am innately lazy. β€” Craig Parker

Only a great actor finds the difficulties of the actor's art infinite. β€” Ellen Terry

Famous Actor Quotes

There are five stages in the life of an actor: Who's Mary Astor? Get me Mary Astor. Get me a Mary Astor type. Get me a young Mary Astor. Who's Mary Astor? β€” Mary Astor

It's not my goal to be a famous actor. β€” Gavin DeGraw

The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis. β€” Marlon Brando

I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. β€” Lou Gehrig

Jason Lee is the most famous actor from Hawaii I can think of. β€” Tia Carrere

I don’t want kids to think it’s okay to drop out of school and get high, and they’ll be famous actors, too. β€” Cory Monteith

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. β€” Michael Douglas

As much as it's nice to step into that massive world of Hollywood and be a big, famous actor, I prefer the career of actors that have really chosen smartly and done really amazing performances. Maybe they're not as known, but their careers are a bit more interesting. β€” Idris Elba

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. β€” Oliver Stone

Filmmakers tell actors to adjust their body language, and the famous presence of the actor is his or her body language. That is what makes them special and a movie star. An actor's capital is his body. β€” Wim Wenders

Actors And Acting Quotes

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. β€” Michael Chekhov

Work for the actor lies essentially in two areas: the ability to consistently create reality and the ability to express that reality. β€” Lee Strasberg

The way I saw it was, if I had the built-in following and the audience, but I also had the skill set of acting, that would shoot me to the top. Because there's so many good actors. There's so many good-looking people. But the X factor now is social media. β€” Jake Paul

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. β€” Sanford Meisner

One of the things I like about my profession, and that I find healthy, is that one constantly has to break oneself to pieces. β€” Liv Ullmann

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. β€” Kate Winslet

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. β€” Nicholas Brendon

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. β€” Kevin Bacon

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. β€” Jimmy Smits

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. β€” Constantin Stanislavski

Stage Actors Quotes

The world of chemical reactions is like a stage, on which scene after scene is ceaselessly played. The actors on it are the elements. β€” Clemens Winkler

This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once: scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic. β€” Carl Jung

I'm known as a kind of dramatic, serious, almost humorless actor and the fact is, I'm a funny guy, and I spend most of my life trying to find a lighter side of things, and on stage was given plenty of opportunity to do that. β€” Campbell Scott

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. β€” Konstantin Stanislavisky

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. β€” Constantin Stanislavski

Our demands are simple, normal, and therefore they are difficult to satisfy. All we ask is that an actor on the stage live in accordance with natural laws. β€” Constantin Stanislavski

Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage. β€” Charlie Chaplin

This power that I'm supposed to have over women was never noticed when I was a stage actor on Broadway. I don't know when I got it. And by God, I can't explain it. β€” Clark Gable

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women mearly players. β€” William Shakespeare

There are three stages of an actor's career. Young, old, and "You look good". β€” Burt Reynolds

Acting In Movies Quotes

Sometimes I feel as if we are all trapped in a movie. We know our lines, where to walk, how to act, only there is no camera. Yet, we can't break out of the movie. And it's a bad one. β€” Charles Bukowski

Stop being a supporting player in the movie that is your life. Become the movie star. This is a hero's journey you have embarked upon. It's high time you start acting like it. β€” Rich Roll

I'd like to be a superhero or a supervillain in a huge action movie. I want to play, like, the Joker or something like that. β€” Jake Paul

After 'Prom Night' I did two movies where I was playing a prostitute. I gravitate towards characters that have some sort of inner turmoil or some sort of character arc. That's the great thing about acting, so many different things and being really diverse in your choices. β€” Brittany Snow

I want to be in R-rated movies. β€” Logan Paul

I had given thought to acting, but I never really had a good enough opportunity or a character who made sense and paralleled my life a little bit. I feel like I'm one of the poster boys for a bad guy in a movie. I feel like I'm a good person to play a bad guy in a movie. I can say that. β€” Gucci Mane

I work constantly but I work at a lot of different things. You know, I run a theater company in New York, I direct plays, act in plays, in movies, so I try to keep it eclectic. β€” Philip Seymour Hoffman

I think the best roles are in dark movies. It's roles that aren't you. It's fun playing someone that's not me. If I'm playing me all the time, then it's not acting. It's just being yourself. β€” Chloe Grace Moretz

Life's generally artless ... but it does get these occasional hard-ons for plot. It connects things, nefariously, behind your back, and before you know it you're in the final act of a lousy movie. β€” Glen Duncan

The only really good thing about acting in movies is that there's no heavy lifting. β€” Cary Grant

Good Actor Quotes

I think I'm good at amplifying an actor's strengths, and minimizing their weaknesses. And they all have strengths and weaknesses. β€” Steven Soderbergh

All these social media sites allow us to confuse truth and popularity. That has to be fixed. Because every normal citizen has a right to know what is factual versus what is amplified by good actors or bad actors. β€” Chamath Palihapitiya

Being a good actor isn't easy. Being a man is even harder. I want to be both before I'm done. β€” James Dean

Be so good they can't ignore you. β€” Steve Martin

Magic Johnson, former basketball player, may run for mayor of L.A. in the next election. Remember the good 'ol days when only qualified people ran for office like actors and professional wrestlers. β€” Jay Leno

A good director creates an environment, which gives the actor the encouragement to fly. β€” Kevin Bacon

I think any good actor is an anarchist. They have to be. β€” Sam Rockwell

Actors need a kind of aggression, a kind of inner force. Don't be only one-sided, sweet, nice, good. Get rid of being average. Find the killer in you. β€” Stella Adler

To be a good actor you have to be something like a criminal, to be willing to break the rules to strive for something new. β€” Nicolas Cage

Eighty percent of a picture is writing, the other twenty percent is the execution, such as having the camera on the right spot and being able to afford to have good actors in all parts. β€” Billy Wilder

People Writing About Actors

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More Actors Quotes

Of course, if you have thought up to now that an actor relies merely on inspiration you will have to change your mind. Talent without work is nothing more than raw unfinished material. β€” Constantin Stanislavski

Being an actor is a religious calling because you've been given the ability, the gift to inspire humanity. Think about that on the way to your soap opera audition. β€” Sanford Meisner

The more we understand what is happening in the world, the more frustrated we often become, for our knowledge leads to feelings of powerlessness. We feel that we are living in a world in which the citizen has become a mere spectator or a forced actor, and that our personal experience is politically useless and our political will a minor illusion. β€” C. Wright Mills

The ladder of success in Hollywood is usually a press agent, actor, director, producer, leading man; and you are a star if you sleep with each of them in that order. Crude, but true. β€” Hedy Lamarr

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. β€” Sir Alec Guinness

You know, the period of World War I and the Roaring Twenties were really just about the same as today. You worked, and you made a living if you could, and you tired to make the best of things. For an actor or a dancer, it was no different then than today. It was a struggle. β€” James Cagney

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. β€” Alec Guinness

I want to run for the Senate from Tennessee. Not now, but when I'm 50, when music dies down a little bit. I know lots of artists and actors have those delusions of grandeur, but ever since I was a kid, it's been of interest to me. β€” Tim McGraw

There's editing, and scripts to read and edit, and casting, and all the elements of production that just sort of take up the normal downtime that you would have as an actor. So there's not a lot of that for me. β€” Richard Dean Anderson

You either learn your way towards writing your own script in life, or you unwittingly become an actor in someone else's script. β€” John Taylor Gatto

My childhood was really nice. My parents never forced me to do anything; it was always, "If you want to do that, fine." When I told my father I was going to be an actor, he said, "Fine, but study welding just in case." β€” Robin Williams

It is highly possible that what is called 'talented behavior' is simply a greater individual capacity for experiencing. From this point of view, it is in the increasing of the individual capacity for experiencing that the untold potentiality of a personality can be evoked. β€” Viola Spolin

The balcony is a metaphor for a mental and emotional place of perspective, calm, and self-control. If life is a stage and we are all actors on that stage, then the balcony is a place from which we can see the entire play unfolding with greater clarity. To observe ourselves, it is valuable to go to the balcony at all times, and especially before, during, and after any problematic conversation or negotiation. β€” William Ury

The actor has to develop his body. The actor has to work on his voice. But the most important thing the actor has to work on is his mind. β€” Stella Adler

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