Acting Quotes

Even I don’t know myself... In fact, I don’t know if I really have a self at all, as I’m constantly playing different roles and pretending – not so much on stage as in real life...

~ Simona Panova

Emotions don’t interfere in my acting, nor in my life.

~ Simona Panova

Don’t try to present your art by making other people read or hear or see or touch it; make them feel it. Wear your art like your heart on your sleeve and keep it alive by making people feel a little better. Feel a little lighter. Create art in order for yourself to become yourselfand let your very existence be your song, your poem, your story.Let your very identity be your book.Let the way people say your name sound like the sweetest melody.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

Without writers, stories would not be written,Without actors, stories could not be brought to life.

~ Angie-Marie Delsante

On the great canvas of timeWe all create our own masterpiece.Choreographing our steps across minutes and hoursDancing over the daysPainting pictures over months andWriting our stories on the years.Singing our songs that echo across eons.We are all a thread in the talent tapestry.A snapshot in the cosmic, collective collage.

~ Michele Jennae

Darling, don't be silly, your whole future is ahead of you. All you have to do is go out there and ask for a part- something small and reasonable just to start with. From there, no one can stop you. Don't feel bad about anything you've done, and for God's sake, have fun.

~ Anna Godbersen

You should want to act only because you want to be led to something bigger in life.

~ Stella Adler

You cannot afford to confine your studies to the classroom. The universe and all of history is your classroom.

~ Stella Adler

My basic profession is as an actor, and I have learnt much about life through working as an actor. Working as an actor is really a spiritual profession, since it means to create life on the stage. It means to play a role totally, while at the same time you know deep down inside yourself that you are not the role that you are playing. Working as an actor gave me early a spiritual discipline, which taught me a lot about awareness and meditation. Life is also about learning to play different roles, and learning to change between different roles with the same easiness that you change shirt.

~ Swami Dhyan Giten

Grief and rage--you need to contain that, to put a frame around it, where it can play itself out without you or your kin having to die. There is a theory that watching unbearable stories about other people lost in grief and rage is good for you--may cleanse you of your darkness. Do you want to go down to the pits of yourself all alone? Not much. What if an actor could do it for you? Isn't that why they are called actors? They act for you. You sacrifice them to action. And this sacrifice is a mode of deepest intimacy of you with your own life. Within it you watch [yourself] act out the present or possible organization of your nature. You can be aware of your own awareness of this nature as you never are at the moment of experience. The actor, by reiterating you, sacrifices a moment of his own life in order to give you a story of yours.

~ Anne Carson

A clown needn't be the same out of the ring as he has to be when he's in it. If you look at photographs of clowns when they're just being ordinary men, they've got quite sad faces.

~ Enid Blyton

Just know your lines and don't bump into the furniture.

~ Spencer Tracy

Do you think that the people on reality T.V. shows are kind of good actors? I mean they would have to be! You can't ignore all the cameras and, you know, the whole situation of being on a reality show... But here is what I'm wondering. Do you think that they think of themselves as actors? Or do you think that they are living their lives behind an impenetrable shield? Like their entire approach to life is the same as an actor's approach to a performance? So when they had to act natural in an unnatural situation it was sort of no big deal.

~ Kevin Hooyman

Thinking without acting makes you a coward. Acting without thinking makes you insane. You need both the thoughts and actions, they never walk alone!

~ Israelmore Ayivor

Challenge anything that could step into your plans with the intention of acting as a resistance towards your fulfillment.

~ Israelmore Ayivor

If it must be enjoyed, then it must be done. And if it must be done, then it must be done well. If it is done well, it is enjoyed well.

~ Israelmore Ayivor

On having a backup plan: Always a good plan anytime you want to follow your dream - I love writing, acting, and psychiatry - there are crazy people everywhere which means I can take my career anywhere my dream needs to go.

~ Samantha Steele

People with dissociative disorders are like actors trapped in a variety of roles. They have difficulty integrating their memories, their sense of identity and aspects of their consciousness into a continuous whole. They find many parts of their experience alien, as if belonging to someone else. They cannot remember or make sense of parts of their past.

~ David Speigel

Actors and actresses make magic,' I said. 'They make things happen on the stage; they invent; they create.

~ Anne Rice

On those nights, the words were for me alone. They came up unbidden from my heart. They spilled over my tongue and spilled out my mouth. And because of them, I, who was nothing and nobody, was a prince of Denmark, a maid of Verona, a queen of Egypt. I was a sour misanthrope, a beetling hypocrite, a conjurer's daughter, a mad and murderous king.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

Act as though everything will be perfectly fine — because it will. Life has you and it's not letting you go.

~ Bryant Mcgill

You have to understand your best. Your best isn't Barrymore's best or Olivier's best or my best, but your own. Every person has his norm. And in that norm every person is a star. Olivier could stand on his head and still not be you. Only you can be you. What a privilege! Nobody can reach what you can if you do it. So do it. We need your best, your voice, your body. We don't need for you to imitate anybody, because that would be second best. And second best is no better than your worst.

~ Stella Adler

You have to do something. If you do something, you become somebody. Even a daffodil does something, has a profession. It gives off scent, professionally.

~ Stella Adler

Life is like theatre. Each new day is a new scene with new acts and roles to portray. The sets always change. You come across new dialogue and lines to exchange between others. Scripts are improvised. But the beauty in it is that everyday, you are constantly learning who you are and how others around you are. Express yourself and empathize. It's okay to wear a mask every now and then but remember that you'll eventually meet fellow thespians who will find a way to break down your walls and barriers. Remember another thing: this isn't a dress rehearsal. And God is your ultimate Director. Let Him write your script and call the cuts. Allow Him to provide you with the applause that truly matters. Let Him open up your heart to real self discovery. He is the best playwright that never dies. He lives. And so do you when you learn to let go and step on the stage of life.

~ Melody Joy

You will fail. That's great. Here's a secret for you - that's the only way you can learn. Learning has to cost you something. If you fail but learn something from your failure, you will grow.

~ Stella Adler

I said, I don't think I can give you that kind of emotion. And he [Hitchcock] sat there and said, Ingrid, fake it! Well, that was the best advice I've had in my whole life, because in all the years to come there were many directors who gave me what I thought were quite impossible instructions and many difficult things to do, and just when I was on the verge of starting to argue with them, I heard his voice coming to me through the air saying, Ingrid, fake it! It saved a lot of unpleasant situations and waste of time.

~ Ingrid Bergman

The biggest spur to my interest in art came when I played van Gogh in the biographical film Lust For Life. The role affected me deeply. I was haunted by this talented genius who took his own life, thinking he was a failure. How terrible to paint pictures and feel that no one wants them. How awful it would be to write music that no one wants to hear. Books that no one wants to read. And how would you like to be an actor with no part to play, and no audience to watch you. Poor Vincent—he wrestled with his soul in the wheat field of Auvers-sur-Oise, stacks of his unsold paintings collecting dust in his brother's house. It was all too much for him, and he pulled the trigger and ended it all. My heart ached for van Gogh the afternoon that I played that scene. As I write this, I look up at a poster of his Irises—a poster from the Getty Museum. It's a beautiful piece of art with one white iris sticking up among a field of blue ones. They paid a fortune for it, reportedly $53 million. And poor Vincent, in his lifetime, sold only one painting for 400 francs or $80 dollars today. This is what stimulated my interest in buying works of art from living artists. I want them to know while they are alive that I enjoy their paintings hanging on my walls, or their sculptures decorating my garden

~ Kirk Douglas

The stage is a magic circle where only the most real things happen, a neutral territory outside the jurisdiction of Fate where stars may be crossed with impunity. A truer and more real place does not exist in all the universe.

~ P.s. Baber

But if I hope to understand in order to accept things - the act of surrender will never happen. I must take the plunge all at once, a plunge that includes comprehension and especially incomprehension. And who am I to dare to think? What I have to do is surrender. How is it done? I know however that only by walking do you know how to walk and - miracle - find yourself walking.

~ Clarice Lispector

Acting on our interests refines our understanding of what we are good at and what we value. The experiences we have along the way sometimes introduce us to new values that enhance and enlarge our vision. The lessons we learn through habits of action test our understanding and teach us to identify what matters in our life.

~ Marian Deegan

Now that I think I know what I'm doing, I'm scared. Before this, I just didn't know any better.

~ Lee Marvin

The thing is', (Rufus) Stone said, 'that if you don't believe that you are an old man, or a woman, or a tramp, then how can you expect anyone else to believe you? Looking the part is just the surface; being the part is the true disguise.

~ Andy Lane

Thought before word. Never word before thought.

~ Suzy Kassem

I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human. I felt very puny as a human. I thought, 'Fuck that. I want to be a superhuman.

~ David Bowie

I think acting is revealing to people what it means to be human.

~ Nick Enright

There's a difference between playing and playing games. The former is an act of joy, the latter — an act.

~ Vera Nazarian

Whenever you take on playing a villain, he has to cease to be a villain to you. If you judge this man by his time, he's doing very little wrong.

~ Colin Firth

There is a perfect rout of characters in every man—and every man is like an actor’s trunk, full of strange creatures, new & old. But an actor and his trunk are two different things

~ Wallace Stevens

Ciss says, 'People have less emotions than actors think they have. For much of the time we hide our emotions, we haven't time for emotions. Our brains work so much faster than our emotions.

~ Antony Sher

Have a good looking is not worthy if you don't act just like your appearances.

~ Shim Steward