Acting is the art of speaking in a loud, clear voice and the avoidance of bumping into the furniture. — Alfred Lunt
Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances. — Sanford Meisner
To me, theater is the mecca; if you really love to act, that's where it's the most fun, by a long shot. — Scott Caan
Acted drama requires surrender of one's self, sympathetic absorption in the play as it develops. — George P. Baker
Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life. — Bette Davis
For me, making the show work was getting belly laughs - like most variety artists. But the straight actor believes you fix your performance in rehearsal and that's it. — Ron Moody
Theater is a verb before it is a noun, an act before it is a place. — Martha Graham
Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life. — Jeff Goldblum
I hold theatre acting in such high esteem that it scares me. — Kate Bosworth
I love acting. It is so much more real than life. — Oscar Wilde
The difference - the fundamental difference between theater acting and film acting is that film acting is disjunctive. — James Lipton
Acting is about being real, being honest. — Kate Winslet
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. — Jeanne Moreau
You can always pick out stage actors at the Oscars: they know how to walk. — Ian Mckellen
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
Short Stage Acting Quotes
Acting is standing up naked and turning around very slowly. — Rosalind Russell
Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing. — Ralph Richardson
Action is always seen as the bottom rung of thespian endeavour, that's just the way it is. — Sylvester Stallone
Film actors reach a certain level, but they don't get beyond it unless they work in the theater. — Shirley Knight
Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage. — Charlie Chaplin
Acting is like a Halloween mask that you put on. — River Phoenix
Movies will make you famous; Television will make you rich; But theatre will make you good. — Terrence Mann
To me, acting is acting... I'd be happy working on a street corner in a mime troupe. — Kelly McGillis
It's not a movie, no private screening This method acting, well, I call that living — Conor Oberst
Stage Acting Image Quotes
Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it's now or never.
Acting On Stage 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
People do complain about the way I act on stage... They think on stage I act too arrogant, too self-obsessed, solecistic, self-contained, synonyms. — Bo Burnham
I would rather do many small roles on TV, stage or film than one blockbuster that made me rich but had no acting. — Miranda Richardson
Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity.
Art is violent. To be decisive is violent. ... To place a chair at a partial angle on the stage destroys every other possible choice, every other option. — Anne Bogart
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
If I do a film and have to get naked, that tends to dictate how often I go to the gym. Acting in 'Richard II' on stage was a huge physical workout, so I ended up more toned than I normally am. — Eddie Redmayne
Speak with honesty, think with sincerity, act with integrity.
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. — George Bernard Shaw
Theatre for a New Audience is one of America's most admirable and exciting theatre companites...some of the best acted and directed work to be found on American stages, engaging with the canon of world dramatic literature in a vigorous way. — Tony Kushner
In life, as on the stage, it's not who I am but what I do that's the measure of my worth and the secret of my success. All the rest is showiness, arrogance and conceit. — Stella Adler
I attend film school, my background is acting and directing. But the acting does best, I like to work on the stage. — Tommy Wiseau
Stage Show Quotes
I got booed off the stage one time. This was in a University in Florida. The students didn't know that I had to come back out 6 more times, because I was hosting the show. They just thought that I was a comedian opening the show. — Theo Von
In 2001, Katie Couric told 'Today Show' audiences that 7 percent of Americans doubt the moon landing happened - that it was staged in the Nevada desert. — Annie Jacobsen
There is a kind of classlessness in the theater. The rehearsal pianist, the head carpenter, the stage manager, the star of the show-all are family. — John Kander
There are seven days in the week and someday isn't one of them.
Bodybuilding is men on a stage in their underwear wearing brown paint showing other men their muscles. It is training for appearance only, and at the contest level requires a degree of vanity, narcissism, and self-absorption that I find distasteful and odd — Mark Rippetoe
Go out on the stage as a human being and do not be afraid to show struggle in your music. It's a struggle in life and then struggle and then victory. — Wayne Shorter
When I'm on stage the savage in me is released. It's like going back to being a cave man. It takes me six hours to come down after a show. — Angus Young
Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.
I feel like you have to make art because you have to make it. But the end result of it- that last stage- you have to show it to somebody else to hopefully get a rise or reaction out of them- [to see] if it’ll affect someone else. — Frank Iero
[On turning down an invitation to appear for four minutes on the Ed Sullivan Show:] Honey, it takes Moms four minutes just to get on the stage. — Moms Mabley
The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a theatrical show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that... and all the glory of it. — John Adams
I have never had anything that I can remember in the business - and that includes all the movies and the stage shows and everything - that I didn't enjoy. I didn't like some of the small-time vaudeville, because we weren't going on and getting better. Aside from that, I didn't dislike anything. — Fred Astaire
Stage Performer Quotes
We love not just Judas Priest music, but we love heavy metal and we love to get out on that stage every night and perform. It's a joy to be able to do it. — Glenn Tipton
I want to say it to so many people, 'why you have to be so serious?' And I also want people to think 'this kid has really gone crazy' when they see my performance on the stage. Luckily, I am able to achieve all of these. — G-Dragon
Personality is essential. It is in every work of art. When someone walks on stage for a performance and has charisma, everyone is convinced that he has personality. I find that charisma is merely a form of showmanship. Movie stars usually have it. A politician has to have it. — Lukas Foss
We are what we repeatedly do; excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
If you have stage fright, it never goes away. But then I wonder: is the key to that magical performance because of the fear? — Stevie Nicks
I just love the thrill of performing on stage. I believe that singing is something I was put here to do. — Lucy Hale
As a coach, your high standards of performance, attention to detail and - above all - how hard you work set the stage for how your players perform. — Don Shula
Kindness is not a business. True kindness expects nothing in return and should never act with conditions.
I want to be on stage and perform and win Grammys and help out my family in Bulgaria, because they are struggling, and my mom and dad, too. — Leah LaBelle
When you are on stage you are having an affair with three thousand people. — Gelsey Kirkland
Even as a stage performer, I have my garb which is leather jackets and black jeans to make me feel a certain way. The wardrobe is really important to feeling the character you're playing. — Andrew Dice Clay
Give me a guitar and I'll play; give me a stage and I'll perform; give me an auditorium and I'll fill it. — Eric Clapton
Stage Drama Quotes
I've been very physical my whole life. I went out hiking and camping for days in the Australian forest, and when I trained at drama school for three years, we did a whole lot on stage-fighting techniques. And I was a dancer from 5 to 18, so I have a memory for choreography. — Yvonne Strahovski
We are in the black theater of nonexistence. In an eye blink the curtain is up, the stage ablaze, for the vast drama of ourselves. — Herman Wouk
The unencumbered stage encourages the truth operative in everyone. The less seen, the more heard. The eye is the enemy of the ear in real drama. — Thornton Wilder
Carry out a randon act of kindness, with no expectations of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you.
People think stage school is a little star factory but the truth is kids like me learned about being in a team situation and going out to work earlier than a lot of kids did. I don't know anyone from drama school who's now sitting on their arse doing nothing. — Amy Winehouse
The real drama of life is never centerstage. It's always in the wings. — Fred Rogers
To me, the appeal of opera lies in the fact that a myriad of singers and instruments, each possessed of different qualities of voice and sound, against the backdrop of a grand stage and beautiful costumes, come together in one complete and impressive drama. — Junichiro Koizumi
Dream Big. Start small. Act now.
With the opening of the second decade of the twentieth century it seemed that the stage was set for the last act in an unquestioned evolutionary drama. — Ralph Adams Cram
In terms of drama school, what that will give you that you won't necessarily learn on a film set is the technical ability - ie, projecting your voice and stage craft. — Daniel Radcliffe
The cinema is little more than a fad. It's canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage. — Charlie Chaplin
I maintain, against the enemies of the stage, that patterns of piety, decently represented, may second the precepts. — John Dryden
Theatre Acting Quotes
Create your own method. Don't depend slavishly on mine. Make up something that will work for you! But keep breaking traditions, I beg you. — Constantin Stanislavski
I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space, whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged. — Peter Brook
Unless the theatre can ennoble you, make you a better person, you should flee from it. — Constantin Stanislavski
Act as if it were impossible to fail.
You can't learn to act unless you're criticized. If you tie that criticism to your childhood insecurities you'll have a terrible time. Instead, you must take criticism objectively, pertaining it only to the work being done. — Sanford Meisner
An ounce of behavior is worth a pound of words. — Sanford Meisner
The truth of ourselves is the root of our acting. — Sanford Meisner
Act with kindness but do not expect gratitude.
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
In the theatre we reach out and touch the past through literature, history and memory so that we might receive and relive significant and relevant human qualities in the present and then pass them on to future generations. — Anne Bogart
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
Stage Actors 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
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
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
You need three things in the theatre - the play, the actors and the audience, and each must give something. — Kenneth Haigh
Stage Performance Quotes
[On Katharine Hepburn's stage performance:] She ran the whole gamut of emotions, from A to B. — Dorothy Parker
Most people go on living their everyday life: half-frightened, half indifferent, they behold the ghostly tragic-comedy that is being performed on the international stage before the eyes and ears of the world. — Albert Einstein
I'm so powerful in stage that I seem to have created a monster. When I'm performing I'm an extrovert, yet inside I'm a completely different man. — Freddie Mercury
It was also great to have the Backstreet Boys appear on stage with me because I have gotten to know them all a little bit just recently, and not only are they great performers, but they also very hard working professionals and really nice guys. — Elton John
I had this totally impossible dream of being an actress. Trust me, just because I'm lucky enough to be doing this doesn't make any of this less of a pipe dream. And nothing gets my juices flowing like a really great performance. To see someone on stage, I get really excited. — Olivia Thirlby
I love performing on stage the most. It's getting that instant reaction from a live audience. There are no boundaries, you can take your character as far as you want to, you can be the craziest person ever. — Jennifer Ellison
My first ever stage performance was in Edinburgh in 1960. — Davy Jones
Music makes my heart beat. The more i hear, sing and perform on stage my heart beats stronger than ever. I want to live like this until the day i die. — Junsu
I love surprising people with a present or a gift or a stage performance or anything. — Michael Jackson
Well the first time I performed, my mom was like how she is now when sees me on stage – all red, smiling from ear to ear. So I don’t want to mess up, [be]cause she’s smiling. Seeing my mom happy is kind of like an overwhelming feeling. — Chris Brown
Performing On Stage Quotes
People think because I can make them laugh on the stage, I'll be able to make them laugh in person. That isn't the case at all. I am essentially a rather quiet, dull person who just happens to be a performer. — Rowan Atkinson
I've tried every kind of bottled water, but Poland Spring is my go-to. I always have room-temperature bottles of it on side of stage for post-performance. — French Montana
I am bigger and stronger than ever. My Chen Taiji and health regimen has served me well all of these years, thanks to Master Ren Guang-yi. I look forward to being on stage performing, and writing more songs to connect with your hearts and spirits and the universe well into the future. — Lou Reed
I try to be good at it, whatever part I'm playing - even in my daily life or when the spotlight hits me on the stage to perform - I gotta be alive every second in this world. With or without the applause! — Dolly Parton
People run on and off the stage, but usually they're removed before they get to me. It's not really frightening. There's always the possibility that someone's going to take a potshot at you; you take that risk when you perform in front of thousands of people. — George Michael
I really have not so much sympathy. If Tina Turner and Prince's back-up band can perform on stage in them for three hours, you can't tell me they are impossible to walk in. High heels are pleasure with pain. If you can't walk in them, don't wear them. — Christian Louboutin
So many dancers rely on some sort of magic happening on the stage. They never, for various reasons, work full out in rehearsal. That's very uncreative. They don't discover the kinds of things that add up to a remarkable performance. — Benjamin Harkarvy
If you can stand on stage and perform a record, you should be able to stand on stage and captivate the audience without the rhyme. You should be a master of ceremonies. — Torae
The adrenaline of performing on stage to a crowd - there's nothing like it. — Shane Filan
I like to take a puff or two before going on the air. I still get stage fright when I have to perform. A little grass gets rid of the problem. — Bob Denver
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. — Peter Brook
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
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
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
I think film and television are really a director's medium, whereas theatre is the actor's medium. — Christopher Eccleston
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
An actor knows two important things - to be honest in what he is doing and to be in touch with the audience. That's not bad advice for a politician either. — Ronald Reagan
Acting Classes Quotes
When I was in New York after I left the Army, I studied for two years at the American Theater Wing, studied acting, which involved dance and fencing and speech classes and history of theater, all that. — James Earl Jones
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
I never took acting classes, but I knew I could do it based on the skill with which I lied to my parents on a regular basis! — Ryan Reynolds
I joined an acting class in my junior year in high school. I'd always wanted to try it. — Rainn Wilson
There's a lot of good rappers in England at the moment. There's a lot of good dance acts. A lot of good, young guitar acts. I think a lot of groups came from that dole culture of the late 80's/early 90's - it's not as easy now. I think there's a dearth of working class bands. — Ian Brown
An elite class that is free to operate without limits - whether limits imposed by the rule of law or fear of the responses from those harmed by their behavior - is an elite class that will plunder, degrade, and cheat at will, and act endlessly to fortify its own power. — Glenn Greenwald
I am just a middle-class farm boy from Dodge City and my grandparents were wheat farmers. I thought painting, acting, directing and photography were all part of being an artist. I have made my money that way. And I have had some fun. It's not been a bad life. — Dennis Hopper
When we started off, we wanted the girls, the cocaine, the fur coats. It wasn't like it was an act; it was almost like working-class people winning the pools. We went bananas. — Noel Gallagher
There are two distinct classes of what are called thoughts: those that we produce in ourselves by reflection and the act of thinking and those that bolt into the mind of their own accord. — Thomas Paine
Art, especially the stage, is an area where it is impossible to walk without stumbling. There are in store for you many unsuccessful days and whole unsuccessful seasons: there will be great misunderstandings and deep disappointments… you must be prepared for all this, expect it and nevertheless, stubbornly, fanatically follow your own way. — Anton Chekhov
There are six stages to knowledge: Firstly: Asking questions in a good manner. Secondly: Remaining quiet and listening attentively. Thirdly: Understanding well. Fourthly: Memorising. Fifthly: Teaching. Sixthly- and it is its fruit: Acting upon the knowledge and keeping to its limits. — Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages. — William Shakespeare
We are setting the stage for war, Netanyahu is setting the path for Armageddon. America thinks that the presence of our offshore naval power will act as a deterrent to the Turks, Iranians, and others in the region that might otherwise become involved in a confrontation with Israel. — Douglas Macgregor
We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force. — Ayn Rand
Stage acting is for me the basic form of acting. If you make films all the time, you have so few possibilities to rehearse. And it's important to rehearse, because it gives you the possibility to try things which are not good! — Erland Josephson
Within the various acts of the ecodrama should be included scenes in which men's and women's roles come to center stage and scenes in which Nature 'herself' is an actress. — Carolyn Merchant
Actually, because I'm so small, when I strike an open A chord I get physically thrown to the left, and when I play an open G chord I go right. That's how hard I play, and that's how a lot of my stage act has come about. I just go where the guitar takes me. — Angus Young
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women mearly players. — William Shakespeare
Without the heart it is no worship; it is a stage play; an acting a part without being that person really which is acted by us: a hypocrite, in the notion of the word, is a stageplayer. — Stephen Charnock
Though violence is not lawful, when it is offered in self-defense or for the defense of the defenseless, it is an act of bravery far better than cowardly submission. The latter befits neither man nor woman. Under violence, there are many stages and varieties of bravery. Every man must judge this for himself. No other person can or has the right. — Mahatma Gandhi
Maybe I'm like acts of Congress or your favorite Chinese restaurant - you don't really want to know what's going on behind the door. I'm a real study in contrast, I expect, looking from without. But it adds up to what you get on stage. — David Lee Roth
An acting assistant stage manager in a theater in Canterbury, a rep theater. A small wage but just enough to get by on, and I made props, and I walked on, and I changed scenery, and I realized that I just loved it. — Jeremy Irons
I wish the stage were as narrow as the wire of a tighrope dancer so that no incompetent would dare step upon it. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes. — Adelbert Von Chamisso
I'm the empty stage where various actors act out various plays. — Fernando Pessoa
When I'm on stage, it's really intense. My mind is going a million miles an hour, trying to remember my act, trying to say it all the right way. It's funny how different it looks and how it's happening. There are three Fellini circuses in my head, and outwardly it looks like I'm going to get a bagel. — Steven Wright
There's a very fine line between underacting and not acting at all. And not acting is what a lot of actors are guilty of. It amazes me how some of these little numbers with dreamy looks and a dead pan are getting away wit it. I'd hate to see them on stage with a dog act. — Joan Blondell
I mean, you know, while I'm acting on stage I'm ranking quite high, but in a room with Barack Obama I'm probably into negative digits. I never feel very famous. — David Tennant
All the world's a stage. — William Shakespeare
[The original Sister Act] is running all over the world now, on-stage as a musical. It lives! — Whoopi Goldberg
I would say I am more concerned with the plays I'm going to do than the movies. I'm more comfortable in a play. In film, there's always a certain sense of control, of holding back. The stage is different ; there's more to act. There are more demands put on you, more experiences to go through. — Al Pacino
He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next — Kurt Vonnegut
Everybody used to say going to restaurants... is like theater, there's stage sets, there's drama, there's play acting and you watch the show. And now, boy, everything's just become so serious. And you sit at the counter and the chef comes out and tells you what he did to the Brussels sprouts leaves and no, there's not a lot of dancing. — Pete Wells
In life's rich beauty pageant we put children on a stage, said flash your soft white belly child, but just don't act your age. — Rodney Crowell
Film acting is really the trick of doing moments. You rarely do a take that lasts more than 20 seconds. You really earn your spurs acting onstage. I needed to do that for myself. I would hate to say at the end of everything that I never did a stage play. — Sam Shepard
But when I went on the stage to do a show, I would put on makeup because I felt that it enhanced my act; it drew attention to what I was doing. — Little Richard
The general direction of evolution is to produce a serially imprinting, multibrained creature able to decipher its own program, create the technology to leave the planet and live in post-terrestrial mini-worlds, decode the aging sectors of the DNA code--thus assuring immortality, and act in harmony with stages of evolution to come. — Timothy Leary
You've got to be on the ball from the minute you step out into that spotlight. You gotta know exactly what you're doing every second on that stage, otherwise the act goes right into the bathroom. It's all over. Good night. — Frank Sinatra
The great actors are the luminous ones. They are the great conductors of the stage. — Ethel Barrymore
Acting is a sport. On stage you must be ready to move like a tennis player on his toes. Your concentration must be keen, your reflexes sharp; your body and mind are in top gear, the chase is on. Acting is energy. In the theatre people pay to see energy. — Clive Swift
I realized that public affairs were also my affairs. I became active in politics because I saw the possibility, if we all sat back and did nothing, of a world in which there would no longer be any stages for actors to act on. — Helen Gahagan Douglas
I want as many people to see the show [Hamilton] in its musical theater form as possible before it's translated, and whether it's a good act of translation or a bad act of translation, it's a leap, and very few stage shows manage the leap successfully. — Lin-Manuel Miranda
In Conclusion
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