Acting Quotes

Physicality is the basis of performance.

I knew exactly when the fever had struck. I had been reading Hamlet in an English class at school. Everyone else stumbled, puzzling over the strange words. Then it had been my turn, and the language had suddenly woken in me, so that my heart and lungs and tongue and throat were on fire. Later, I understood that this was why people spoke of Shakespeare as a god. At the time, I felt like weeping. Somebody had released me from dumbness, from utter isolation. I knew that I could live inside these words, that they would give me a a shape, a shell. I had no idea, then, that I would never play Hamlet…. I’m an actor, and in a good year I earn eleven thousand pounds for dressing up as a carrot.

A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and understand it the first time then I know it can't be much good.

Take the clapper and become the alarm that the world so desperately needs.

Show business is like sex. When it's wonderful it's wonderful. But when it isn't very good it's still all right.

I've lived all these years among those who create nothing and change nothing,' I said. 'Actors and musicians-they're saints to me.

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.

A fan club is a group of people who tell an actor he is not alone in the way he feels about himself.

I've been very lucky at what's happened in my career to date, but playing something as far from me as possible is an ambition of mine - anything from a mutated baddy in a comic book action thriller, to a detective. If anything, I'd like Gary Oldman's career: he's the perfect example of it. I've love to have a really broad sweep of characters - to be able to do something edgy, surprising and unfashionable.

The whole motivation for any performer is 'Look at me Ma.'

Doing nothing was as honourable as any available course of action. Think of Hamlet, think of Job, think of Jesus before Pilate.

Plants are more courageous than almost all human beings: an orange tree would rather die than produce lemons, whereas instead of dying the average person would rather be someone they are not.

To be too knowing is a downfall.

His intuition was luminous from the instant you met him. So was his intelligence. A lot of actors act intelligent, but Philip was the real thing: a shining, artistic polymath with an intelligence that came at you like a pair of headlights and enveloped you from the moment he grabbed your hand, put a huge arm round your neck and shoved a cheek against yours; or if the mood took him, hugged you to him like a big, pudgy schoolboy, then stood and beamed at you while he took stock of the effect. (About Philip Seymour Hoffman)

The imagination is closer to the actor than real life-more agreeable, more comfortable.

Some disabled people spend a significant amount of their energy on trying to come across as abled or as not that disabled.

Playing Shakespeare is very tiring. You never get to sit down unless you're a king.

A movie is not a movie, it is a potential nuclear furnace of inspiration, courage and conscience.

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.

Satire is what closes Saturday night.

Make films that purify the soul with the flow of rational, vigorous and compassionate thinking.

An agent is a guy who is sore because an actor gets 90% of what he makes.

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.

ligion is the opiate of the masses." "I did masses of opiates religiously.

Starting with a party scene for 600 cast and end up singing on top of a giant elephant...does it get any better than this?

Film-making has become a kind of hysterical pregnancy.

Healthy entertainment does not evoke raw emotions in the mind of a viewer only to make them wreak havoc, rather it guides those emotions in a healthy direction.

People are incredibly rude about it sometimes. Like, `What? You`re married?` Strange reaction to have. Proves what people`s ideas about marriage are. `We`re having a baby.` `What?` As if it`s the end of the world. Of course, it`s the start of a brilliant world.

Theatre is simply what cannot be expressed by any other means a complexity of words movements gestures that convey a vision of the world inexpressible in any other way.

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.

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. At first, the infant,Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchelAnd shining morning face, creeping like snailUnwillingly to school. And then the lover,Sighing like furnace, with a woeful balladMade to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,Seeking the bubble reputationEven in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,In fair round belly with good capon lined,With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,Full of wise saws and modern instances;And so he plays his part. The sixth age shiftsInto the lean and slippered pantaloon,With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wideFor his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,Turning again toward childish treble, pipesAnd whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,That ends this strange eventful history,Is second childishness and mere oblivion,Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

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

Spencer Tracy, when asked for advice on acting, said, “Know your lines and don’t bump into the furniture.” James Cagney said, “Walk in, plant your feet, look the other fellow in the eye and…tell the truth.” With all due respect to both of these giant talents, I would have to say there’s something more. The true creation of a being, a character other than one’s self, for me is comparable to a mystical or spiritual experience. To stand in another person’s shoes. To see as he sees, to hear as he hears. To know what he knows, and to do all this with a sense of control, a mastering of the dramatic moment, there must be more than a “natural talent” at work.

The person who wants to make it has to sweat. There are no short cuts. And you've got to have the guts to be hated.

The play was a great success but the audience was a disaster.

The further you get away from yourself, the more challenging it is. Not to be in your comfort zone is great fun.

When my turn on the program comes, I am not nervous at all—because all this is happening out of time, out of space. I am, for a moment, a figure of my own fantasy, and I play my appointed role as if I were in the movies.

A lot of parents tell their children that if they want to be an actor, that's fine, but they should do something else first, so they've got something to fall back on. It doesn't work like that, as far as I'm concerned.

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.

I've learned to get really good at this - say one thing when I'm thinking about something else, act like I'm listening when I'm not, pretend to be calm and happy when I'm really freaking out. It's one of the skills you perfect as you get older

Not to go to the theatre is like making one's toilet without a mirror.

No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does straight to our emotions deep into the twilight room of the soul.

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

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

It seemed that I performed better sober than drunk. Who knew?

In the language of an actor, to know is synonymous with to feel

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

I don't get it. I just don't get it. If Art is supposed to imitate Life, why do they want all the actors to be thin? There are fat people in the world. Shouldn't there be a few of us actors to represent them?

As an adult, getting paid thousands of dollars a week to say, “Aye, Sir. Course laid in” is a seriously sweet gig, but when I was a teenager, it sucked.

The live entertainment Canadians like most is the intimate review a collection of songs and sketches preferably with a satirical bias.

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.

A good actor must never be in love with anyone but himself.

Use filmmaking to eliminate racism – use to it terminate misogyny – use it to destroy homophobia and all other primitiveness.

I always am in a role, lovely – for you, for them – even for myself. Yeah... Even when I’m alone, I am still in a role – and I myself am the most exacting audience I have ever had.

When life gives you lemons...add melted butter , toasted paprika and dip some lobster in it!

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.

You are the actor. Your body brings in something, call it presence, and it happens by degrees. Arms, chest, haunches and thighs, calves and feet. The body, firing synapses, in between and in the gray matter. On and off. The billions of cells, the body mechanisms, the busy regulating, the adjusting, the retinas contracting and expanding, body secreting, beating, moving, breathing and pulsing. Your being registers here. Swallow. Inhale. Open mouth to press air out to touch the flesh in the throat to make sound. You are the actor. A thing of flesh and feeling. Perfect because you aren't.

If you give audiences a chance they'll do half your acting for you.