Film actors reach a certain level, but they don't get beyond it unless they work in the theater. — Shirley Knight
Actors are rogues and vagabonds. Or they ought to be. — Helen Mirren
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
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
Acting in theatre or television or screen is only for the irrecoverably diseased, those so smitten with the need that there is no choice. — Michael Shurtleff
Theater is a verb before it is a noun, an act before it is a place. — Martha Graham
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
Movies will make you famous; Television will make you rich; But theatre will make you good. — Terrence Mann
You need three things in the theatre - the play, the actors and the audience, and each must give something. — Kenneth Haigh
I hold theatre acting in such high esteem that it scares me. — Kate Bosworth
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
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
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
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 think film and television are really a director's medium, whereas theatre is the actor's medium. — Christopher Eccleston
Short Theatre Actors Quotes
Acted drama requires surrender of one's self, sympathetic absorption in the play as it develops. — George P. Baker
You can always pick out stage actors at the Oscars: they know how to walk. — Ian Mckellen
To me, acting is acting... I'd be happy working on a street corner in a mime troupe. — Kelly McGillis
A magician is an actor playing the part of a magician. — Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin
Good theatre draws the energies out of the place where it is and gives it back as joie de vivre. — Joan Littlewood
When an actor marries an actress they both fight for the mirror.
Stage Actors 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
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
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
Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.
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
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
Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances. — Sanford Meisner
Unless the theatre can ennoble you, make you a better person, you should flee from it. — Constantin Stanislavski
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
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
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
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
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
Actors And Acting Quotes
Work for the actor lies essentially in two areas: the ability to consistently create reality and the ability to express that reality. — 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. — 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. — 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Stage Acting Quotes
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Great 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
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
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
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
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
Only a great actor finds the difficulties of the actor's art infinite. — Ellen Terry
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
Theatre Quotes
Theatre is a form of knowledge; it should and can also be a means of transforming society. Theatre can help us build our future, rather than just waiting for it. — Augusto Boal
Drama is exposure; it is confrontation; it is contradiction and it leads to analysis, construction, recognition and eventually to an awakening of understanding. — Peter Brook
Unless the theatre can ennoble you, make you a better person, you should flee from it. — Konstantin Stanislavisky
It is not theatre that is indispensable, but something quite different. To cross the frontiers between you and me. — Jerzy Grotowski
The work of rehearsal is looking for meaning and then making it meaningful. — Peter Brook
Coughing in the theater is not a respiratory ailment. It is a criticism. — Alan Jay Lerner
We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself. — Bertolt Brecht
Keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. — Rudyard Kipling
In my freshman year in high school, I went to the only public high school in Boston with a theatre program. — Donnie Wahlberg
Character Actors Quotes
Every animator is really an actor performing in slow motion, living the character a drawing at a time. — John Lasseter
I was always a character actor. I just looked like Little Red Riding Hood. — Paul Newman
The nice thing is that, at least in Los Angeles, I'm known as a character actor and I do auditions for other things besides just cartoon shows. — Dan Castellaneta
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
I go through a whole process with the actors first, building and creating characters, then I encourage them to sort of live in that character when they're in the screen. — Keenen Ivory Wayans
Although there was a screenplay, the actors never knew what questions I was going to ask them, and all of my character's voice-over narration and scenes were added after the fact. — Griffin Dunne
It is scary for an actor when you get hired as a lead. No matter what the plot is, it is your job to do something interesting enough to make them want to get inside the lead character's head. — Tom Selleck
The actor should not play a part. Like the Aeolian harps that used to be hung in the trees to be played only by the breeze, the actor should be an instrument played upon by the character he depicts. — Alla Nazimova
I start with the story, almost in the old campfire sense, and the story leads to both the characters, which actors should best be cast in this story, and the language. The choice of words, more than anything else, creates the feeling that the story gives off. — Donald E. Westlake
There's always a concern as an actor that you'll be boring unless your character is swinging from a chandelier. — Matthew Macfadyen
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. — Peter Facinelli
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
You know obviously a big TV or film break would be lovely, but I find that I’m essentially a theatre trained actor and that’s what I love doing. I love fringe theatres in London, I love theatres like the Royal Court, Soho and the National obviously and if I could work in any of those and be a jobbing actor for a while then I’m very lucky. — Sayings
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
Acting is not being emotional, but being able to fully express emotion. — 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. — James Denton
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
The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis. — Marlon Brando
Just be truthful - and if you can fake that, you've got it made. — Barbara Stanwyck
If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable. — Jack Lemmon
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women mearly players. — William Shakespeare
Young actors, fear your admirers! Learn in time, from your first steps, to hear, understand and love the cruel truth about yourselves. Find out who can tell you that truth and talk of your art only with those who can tell you the truth. — Constantin Stanislavski
Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience. — Jean-Paul Sartre
Fifteen years before I became a screen actor, I was in the theatre. A lot of my work was comedy, which I loved doing. It's harder. — Ben Kingsley
I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being. — Oscar Wilde
I think theatre is by far the most rewarding experience for an actor. You get 4 weeks to rehearse your character and then at 7:30 pm you start acting and nobody stops you, acting with your entire soul. — Christopher Eccleston
I've never been a puppeteer, I conceive and I write and I design and I direct. And not just puppets. I direct actors, I direct dancers, I direct singers, I direct films. I also direct puppeteers. I'm really a theatre maker, but there's not a word for that. — Julie Taymor
I went to Princeton High School, when I was very serious about being an artist. I was in a theatre family but I didn't want to become an actor. — John Lithgow
I had a teacher in Paris, who said that if an actor forgot what it's like to play as a child he shouldn't be an actor. I've always loved being with children. It's marvellous to see the fresh ways they see the world. Watching them look at a tree or a river helps you to understand something that's very important. — Simon McBurney
All the world's a stage. — William Shakespeare
Getting the call to be in The Goblet of Fire was like being welcomed into the most exclusive upper circle of some elite actors' club. You sit on set with the cream of the National Theatre and the RSC, all clutching wands or wearing witches' hats. — David Tennant
I'm curious about other people. That's the essence of my acting. I'm interested in what it would be like to be you. — Meryl Streep
Never meddle with play-actors, for they're a favoured race. — Miguel de Cervantes
Theatre, in which actors take on changing roles, has among its many functions the examination of identity. For the individual, theatre is a kind of identity laboratory in which social roles can be examined vicariously. — Richard Hornby
Now I'm seen by more people in one episode than I was in 20 years of theatre and movies. It's gratifying to have an impact on 25 million people a night, but I can say goodbye to my lunch-pail life as a working actor. I'm scared I might be a celebrity. — William Petersen
I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms. — Thornton Wilder
Oftentimes the quality of the light tells the story: the time of day, the weather, whether sun is streaming through the window. It can also help you appreciate what the actor is feeling, what the playwright wants you to feel. Any engineer can put a spot on someone. — Jules Fisher
Compare the cinema with theatre. Both are dramatic arts. Theatre brings actors before a public and every night during the season they re-enact the same drama. Deep in the nature of theatre is a sense of ritual. The cinema, by contrast, transports its audience individually, singly, out of the theatre towards the unknown. — John Berger
I think I'm a better actress for having friends and interests outside the theatre. I wouldn't want to live my life surrounded by other actors all the time. — Penelope Keith
I went to school, majored in theatre, and said 'Mom, I have to choose my own destiny. I want to be an actor.' A couple of weeks after I graduated college I called my mother up and said 'Can I borrow $200?' and she said 'Why don't you act like you've got $200.' — Arsenio Hall
I have never wanted to be typecast, one of those actors who plays a variation on a one-note theme. So just as I enjoy playing a wide variety of characters, from good to bad to ugly to cute - so I have enjoyed of late working in film and television, as well as in theatres of various sizes and shapes. — Ian Mckellen
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of theatre actors quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about theatre 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 theatre actors quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.
