178 Great Actors Quotes

Following is our list of great actors quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about movie actors.

Famous Great Actors Quotes

Only a great actor finds the difficulties of the actor's art infinite. — Ellen Terry

If two actors have an equal creative give and take between them, it translates beautifully on the screen. — Deepika Padukone

Acting is all about big hair and funny props... All the great actors knew it. Olivier knew it, Brando knew it. — Harold Ramis

The best actors instinctively feel out what the other actors need, and they just accommodate it. — Christopher Nolan

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

You'll never see any two good actors approach a role in the same way. — Constantin Stanislavski

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

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

The real actor has a direct line to the collective heart. — Bette Davis

It's the actors who are prepared to make fools of themselves who are usually the ones who come to mean something to the audience. — Christian Bale

All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That's what makes theatre live. That's why it persists. — Stephen Sondheim

I think any actor worth their salt wants to show as much versatility as they possibly can. — Daniel Radcliffe

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

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. — Francois Truffaut

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

Short Great Actors Quotes

• Actors are rogues and vagabonds. Or they ought to be. — Helen Mirren
• Disney has the best casting. If he doesn't like an actor he just tears him up. — Alfred Hitchcock
• I think any good actor is an anarchist. They have to be. — Sam Rockwell
• Take it from a director: if you get an actor that Sandy Meisner has trained, you've been blessed. — Elia Kazan
• The best acting is instinctive. It's not intellectual, it's not mechanical, it's instinctive. — Craig MacDonald
• I am acquainted with no immaterial sensuality so delightful as good acting. — Lord Byron
• Acting is not about being famous, it's about exploring the human soul. — Annette Bening
• Lost in a crowd of greats, not a single Oscar. That's showbiz. — Maureen O'Hara

Top 10 Great Actors Quotes

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. — Helmut Thielicke

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. — 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. — Kevin Costner

I am hoping that I can be known as a great writer and actor some day, rather than a sex symbol. — 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. — Craig Parker

The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting. — Charlie Chaplin

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

Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. — Mario Puzo

Just be truthful - and if you can fake that, you've got it made. — Barbara Stanwyck

When kids look up to great scientists the way they do to great musicians and actors, civilization will jump to the next level — Brian Greene

Great Actors Image Quotes

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. — 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. — Chamath Palihapitiya

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. — Jake Paul

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

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. — Kevin Bacon

Be so good they can't ignore you. — Steve Martin

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. — Tom Berenger

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. — Jay Leno

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

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. — James Denton

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. — Mo Gawdat

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. — Renny Harlin

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. — Stan Lee

When I was a kid, if a guy got killed in a western movie I always wondered who got his horse. — George Carlin

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. — Robert Redford

The big-budget blockbuster is becoming one of the most dependable forms of filmmaking. — 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. — Steve Carell

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. — Kevin Bacon

But I don't have such a strong desire to need to get away from filmmaking. — 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. — Mark Burnett

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. — 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. — Tom Cruise

Remember: there are no small parts, only small actors. — Constantin Stanislavski

You have film actors doing TV, rap stars doing TV, with everyone kind of crossing the line. — Anthony Michael Hall

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. — George Clooney

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. — 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. — 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. — 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.' — 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. — Kevin Kline

Theatre Actors Quotes

Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances. — Sanford Meisner

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. — Peter Brook

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

An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so he must be willing to accept all experiences that life can offer. — 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. — 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. — 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. — 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. — 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. — Mark Leslie

Acting is not being emotional, but being able to fully express emotion. — Kate Reid

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. — Michael Chekhov

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

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. — 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. — 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. — Kate Winslet

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. — Rachel Bloom

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. — Nicholas Brendon

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. — 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. — Constantin Stanislavski

If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable. — Jack Lemmon

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. — 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 — 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. — 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. — 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. — Paul Mooney

Acting is not about being someone different. It's finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there. — 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. — Paulette Goddard

I am admiring of my fellow peers, black filmmakers and black actors and actresses. — 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. — Maureen O'Hara

Every actor and actress is possessed of the absorbing passion to create something distinctive and unique. — Hattie McDaniel

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? — Mary Astor

It's not my goal to be a famous actor. — Gavin DeGraw

I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. — Lou Gehrig

Jason Lee is the most famous actor from Hawaii I can think of. — 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. — Cory Monteith

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. — 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. — Idris Elba

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. — 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. — Wim Wenders

There are a lot of people who want to be famous nowadays: singers, actors and, you know, it's like a roller-coaster. And when you are very sensitive - I'm very sensitive - you have to be very strong... You have to just not pay attention to the people who hate you, you know? — Eva Green

Acting From Actors Quotes

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. — Viola Spolin

More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic. — Simone Weil

I love learning new things from the other actors. — Sadie Sink

Acting is not that far from mental disease: An actor works on splitting his character into others. It is like a kind of schizophrenia. — Vittorio Gassman

Make sure you live life, which means don't do things where you court celebrity, and give something positive back to our society. — Paul Newman

Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience. — Jean-Paul Sartre

I think the most liberating thing I did early on was to free myself from any concern with my looks as they pertained to my work. — Meryl Streep

I learned much more about acting from philosophy courses, psychology courses, history and anthropology than I ever learned in acting class. — Tim Robbins

I come from an era, in my world, where you just had to define yourself as who you are and what you do. I happen to be an actor. I happen to be someone that loves to act, that also likes music, that also likes to speak, and that also has an opinion. — Idris Elba

Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic art is in no sense cathartic; it is merely a form of emotional masturbation. — Aldous Huxley

Good Actresses Quotes

Facials are my biggest beauty indulgence. Looking good is about having a good base. It's about taking care of your skin. — Halle Berry

To be good is to be forgotten. I'm going to be so bad I'll always be remembered. — Theda Bara

Most things don't work out as expected, but what happens instead often turns out to be the good stuff. — Judi Dench

When you're sad, you're not sad. You are merely oblivious to the good things in your life. There is always a crack of light in the darkness. Find it. — Dianna Agron

Whatever good I have accomplished as an actress I believe came in direct proportion to my efforts to portray black women who have made positive contributions to my heritage. — Cicely Tyson

I now consider it a good day when I don't step on my boobs. — Joan Rivers

I figured as I got older, the good roles for women would be in the theatre. So 15 years ago I started building a Broadway career to try and develop the chops to be accepted as a great theatrical actress. — Kathleen Turner

As an actress, you go where the stories are. I don't really care where it's seen, at this point. I just want to tell good stories and do good roles that I haven't done before. — Winona Ryder

The good thing about being an actress is that it's very children-friendly. I can work for three months and then I can have six months off. And then I can work for six months and have six months off. — Gal Gadot

Hollywood sold its stars on good looks and personality buildups. We weren't really actresses in a true sense, we were just big names - the products of a good publicity department. — Ann Sothern

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. — 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. — 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. — 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. — 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. — 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. — Constantin Stanislavski

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. — Arthur Lowe

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

Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage. — 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. — Clark Gable

People Writing About Great Actors

Name	Quotes	Likes
Bette Davis quotes on joan crawford, aging and love	153	2503
Ellen Terry quotes on love, beauty and life	19	75
Deepika Padukone quotes on life	53	646
Harold Ramis quotes on life, death and life and death	118	378
Christopher Nolan quotes on filmmaking, movies	95	848
W. C. Fields quotes on death, philadelphia	229	2882

More 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?' — Mariska Hargitay

Cinema is a director's medium, so you're saying, "What do you want?" Being an actor is about adapting - physically and emotionally. If that means you have to look great for it and they can make you look great, then thank you. And if you have to have everything washed away, then I'm willing to do that too. — Nicole Kidman

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. — Steve Coogan

The first state an actor experiences onstage is the one he just experienced in life. One needs great courage not to portray this experience. One must surrender entirely to the power of one s artistic nature. It will do all the necessary things. Do not impose any solution upon yourself in advance. The quality to develop in an actor is courage. — Yevgeny Vakhtangov

A bunch of six nicer people, I couldn’t be more fortunate to call my family — from Lee Pace, who is so dear. When I first saw him, I said he’s like a Gary Cooper. He’s bashful, he’s shy, he’s sensitive, he’s a great actor, he’s beautiful, he’s delicious. — Ellen Greene

I think the toughest thing for me to figure out, as an actor, was how to translate all those layers that are in there and that history that the writers have done such a great job at forming. — Alycia Debnam Carey

As an actor you have one great fear: pimples! — Jonathan Brandis

The virtue you would like to have, assume it is already yours, appropriate it, enter into the part and live the character just as the great actor is absorbed in... the part he plays. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have a large watch collection, and classic watches are especially important to me. I had a silver Rolex, and I actually gave it to my little brother. He wears it every day. He's an actor, so whenever he goes to an audition, he can look down, see it, and it gives him confidence. It was a great thing to pass on. — Nate Berkus

As an actor, it's great to play a strong leader with a heart of gold. — John C. McGinley

There's a lot of great writing, and characters, and stories being told in television nowadays. And much more than there used to be. The opportunities to tell stories, because of the opportunities to show content. And so it's drawing actors from cinema, movie actors, actors to where there's a lot of opportunities to where you can tell stories. — Keanu Reeves

My dad had been an actor... not only had my dad been an actor, but his dad had been an actor, and my great-grandfather had been an actor. And who knows before then? — David Hyde Pierce

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. — Bette Davis

I never enjoyed my work more than when I worked with William Powell. He was a brilliant actor, a delightful companion, a great friend and, above all, a true gentleman. — Myrna Loy

I'll make him an offer he can't refuse. — Mario Puzo

What's funny is that there's a lot of great Australian actors in American movies but you don't often hear them do their Australian, original accent. — Owen Wilson

I've been given lots of great advice, in my life. As an actor, just being as honest and as present as you can be. — Rachel McAdams

Ninety per cent of how you learn is watching great people. When you are surrounded by good actors it lifts your performance. — Natalie Portman

It's actually really great to be a student and an actor, because I get to do this job that I love, then just when I think my head might explode, I get to go to school where they don't really care about what magazine cover I'm on. — Julia Stiles

English actors feel vaguely apologetic for being there at all. American actors know that the most important thing is to get one take out of fifty that is great, and they'll go to any length to get it. The English are used to working within consistently small, low-budget things and think, I mustn't waste their time. — Helen Mirren

To be a good actor, you have to be very smart. But to be a great actor, you also have to have a streak of, 'I'm an idiot, a complete lunatic.' — Lena Olin

Wanting to be a good actor is not good enough. You must want to be a great actor. You just have to have that. — Gary Oldman

You make that climb, take it step by step and hopefully the view is great. I try to be a friend for Miley. I know that's not everyone's parenting style. But I try to be a friend, a partner as a singer, actor, songwriter and let her be a teenage girl and do her thing. — Billy Ray Cyrus

Ask any great athlete or the concert pianist or the successful actor if they have arrived at the place where they need no further practice. They will tell you that the higher you climb in proficiency and public acceptance, the greater the need for practice. — Sayings

Great actors try to dismiss all ideas from their conscious mind in order to provide an experience that is real. — Mark Rylance

In Conclusion

Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of great actors quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about great actors to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.

Citation

Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of great actors quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.

Embed HTML Link

Copy and paste this HTML code in your webpage

COPY