Best 3782 quotes in «acting quotes» category

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

I want to be spontaneous like a wild animal.

I was just so afraid.... So afraid of being seen through, of being caught, that I missed the point. I missed the most important fact of it all, which is quite simply...they want to believe in you up there.... The audience wants to forget who's under the mask. But they don't want to forget because of obfuscation...no, they want to forget it's you by virtue of the passion of your performance. They want to be transported.... Transported to a world where bigger truths are at work, and anything--anything--can happen. A world where the impossible is possible. Batman can be someone like that for them, Bruce. Someone who defies every damn rule of logic that governs their lives.

I was playing Rasputin and what was motivating him was crumpet really, and I was extremely keen on crumpet so I was really rather good as Rasputin. And my next catastrophic failure was Macbeth, who I played in the style of a crumpet-lover, and then when Doctor Who came along, I embraced this lunacy, this cloud-cuckoo-land where people had to be convinced by absolute nonsense. I came from a very religious background, so it was easy for me to believe in something I knew nothing about.

I was thinking about … how disarming is the ability to make people laugh. It’s a gift, mimicry, but it’s not acting; in a way it’s the opposite of acting, which is why comedians are seldom good actors. There’s an element of exaggeration in the imposture; the copy is the original painted with a broad brush and it can be grotesque, even cruel. But no one is offended. People are drawn to the funnyman who can imitate a politician or a famous actor or an ethnic type, especially his own ethnic type.

I was truly happy. But my state was not that of any ordinary satisfaction. It was a joy which stemmed directly from creative, artistic achievement.

Literature, although it stands apart by reason of the great destiny and general use of its medium in the affairs of men, is yet an art like other arts. Of these we may distinguish two great classes: those arts, like sculpture, painting, acting, which are representative, or as used to be said very clumsily, imitative; and those, like architecture, music, and the dance, which are self-sufficient, and merely presentative.

Living in California, everyone learns to adapt their actor or actress within.

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

Love, like acting, is a lonely pursuit.

Make movies my friend – make nice, inspiring and bold movies that will penetrate the darkest corners of the human mind and illuminate the soul.

Maybe the trick is for me to always be in some sort of disguise, to always be dressed to play someone else. Only then can I really appreciate myself.

Michael Caine should have the last word on the reviews: 'What about those reviews then?' 'I don't read them.' 'Don't read them? You wrote them didn't you?

MOST PEOPLE think acting is make-believe. Like it’s a big game where people put on costumes and feign kisses or stab wounds and then pretend to gasp and die. They think it’s a show. They don’t understand that acting is becoming someone else, changing your thoughts and needs until you don’t remember your own anymore. You let the other person invade everything you are and then you turn yourself inside out, spilling their identity onto the stage like a kind of bloodletting.

Naturalness onstage is just as much an artifice as naturalism in the novel

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.

Nicole crumpled—just let her legs give way and fell to the floor, hunched and sobbing. Hayley looked at me. Even Rafe did. Uncertain looks from both of them. I had to admit, Nicole was a good actor. If I hadn't seen her switch from "sweet Nicole" to "raving lunatic Nicole" in a heartbeat at the campsite, I might have believed her myself.

Never measure success by other peoples standards. "Accomplishing YOUR OWN goals gives YOU the right to dictate YOUR own Success.

No actor is a success unless he feels inside himself, as long as he lives, that he is good.

Nothing unusual was noted during the voyage, in fact everything ran smoothly until Security alerted Biscay about the stiff in cabin 407. Nobody heard or saw anything suspicious. None of the passengers were missing or acting suspiciously. No airlock doors were opened or any transports allowed since their last stop four days prior. There were no notorious names on the passenger list, nor any unsavory persons among the ranks of his crew. In fact, the ship’s commander had never even seen a dead body in real – um, life before. And yet, almost magically, there it was.

Only then, when no situation or character is obviously good or evil, is it truly interesting to act.

One must know a bad performance to know a good one. You can't be middle-of-the-road about it, just as you can't be middle-of-the-road about life. I mean, you can't say about Hitler, I can take him or leave him. Well, I can't be middle-of-the-road about a performance, especially my own. I feel that if I can vomit at seeing a bad performance, I'm ahead of the game.

One play down and 497 to Go!

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.

On the great canvas of time We all create our own masterpiece. Choreographing our steps across minutes and hours Dancing over the days Painting pictures over months and Writing 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.

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

Oh, I play this rather defeated father and husband who's going through a divorce.' 'You!' the actor is unable or unwilling to hide the contempt, outrage and disapproval in his voice. 'What the hell would you know about that?' I grin tightly and move on. So I should be playing nothing but celibate gay men? Is that how acting works?

Once you drop a mask, you can never wear it again.

Pretending is not just play. Pretending is imagined possibility. Pretending or acting is a very valuable life skill, and we all do it all the time. We don’t want to be caught doing it, but nevertheless it’s part of the adaptation of our species. We change who we are to fit the exigencies of our time.

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.

Perfection? Being the most human you can be.

Our motives are useless if we don’t start acting it out

People don't care about perfection when they want to be entertained.

Sex sells, but gay sex sells better.

Relax, Xander. It's only two lines.” He closed his eyes and leaned into her, his arms wrapping her back. “But it's still lines in a real film, and if I mess it up-” “They'll have you do it again. And again... and again.” Liv laughed. “No big deal. Life is full of second chances.

Safety lies in the risk.

She looked exactly like an angel. I know my jaw dropped a little, and I just stood there looking at her for what seemed like a long time, shocked into silence, until I suddenly remembered that I had a line I had to deliver. I took a deep breath, then slowly let it out. "You're beautiful," I finally said to her, and I think everyone in the whole auditorium, from the blue-haired ladies in the front to my friends in the back row, knew that I actually meant it. I'd nailed that line for the very first time.

Shit, you shoot me in a dream, you better wake up and apologize.

She pretends to be an actress, even though she hasn’t even done enough acting to be a wannabe.

She was merely an actress who had been forced to perform her part on stage without fully knowing her lines. She was not real.

Siempre me he sentido una no persona, y mi única manera de ser alguien ha consistido, probablemente, en intentar ser otra. Por eso he querido interpretar y ser actriz.

She pretends to be an actress, even though she hasn’t even done enough acting to be a wannabe. But she’s a real Academy Award winning manipulator.

Sickness is a benign rehearsal for death. With luck, some other understudy will go on in your stead before your final bow becomes inevitable.

... so this is for us. This is for us who sing, write, dance, act, study, run and love and this is for doing it even if no one will ever know because the beauty is in the act of doing it. Not what it can lead to. This is for the times I lose myself while writing, singing, playing and no one is around and they will never know but I will forever remember and that shines brighter than any praise or fame or glory I will ever have, and this is for you who write or play or read or sing by yourself with the light off and door closed when the world is asleep and the stars are aligned and maybe no one will ever hear it or read your words or know your thoughts but it doesn’t make it less glorious. It makes it ethereal. Mysterious. Infinite. For it belongs to you and whatever God or spirit you believe in and only you can decide how much it meant and means and will forever mean and other people will experience it too through you. Through your spirit. Through the way you talk. Through the way you walk and love and laugh and care and I never meant to write this long but what I want to say is: 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 yourself and 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. So go create. Take photographs in the wood, run alone in the rain and sing your heart out high up on a mountain where no one will ever hear and your very existence will be the most hypnotising scar. Make your life be your art and you will never be forgotten.

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

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.

Success involves failing first. Ask any successful person. Ask any experienced person, really. It's all part of the creative process, so sit back and allow the artist within you to sprout, blossom and flourish. You must accept that your first, second, and third attempt at something might suck. It's a necessary step in improving your skill. Failure is your teacher, not your judge.

Success is not due to spontaneous combustion. You have to set yourself on fire.

Surely you know that whatever the play, the curtain always falls at the end.

Such is the disconcerting miracle of good acting; at its best it implicitly challenges our faith in who we are, who anyone is.