Acting Quotes

4873 Acting quotes by 2890 unique authors

Humor [in a scene] is not jokes. It is that attitude toward being alive without which you would long ago have jumped off the 59th… — Michael Shurtleff
Every scene you will ever act begins in the middle, and it is up to you, the actor, to provide what comes before. — Michael Shurtleff
The first step to a better audition is to give up character and use yourself. — Michael Shurtleff
Competition [in a scene] is healthy. Competition is life. Yet most actors refuse to acknowledge this. They don't want to compete. They want to get… — Michael Shurtleff
Honesty isn't enough for me. That becomes very boring. If you can convince people what you're doing is real and it's also bigger than life… — Gene Hackman
Take nothing for granted. Make an emotional discovery as often as you can find one in every scene. Ask yourself: What is new? — Michael Shurtleff
There's only one reason why a character drinks: to seek confrontation. To fight for what they want in ways normally denied them. — Michael Shurtleff
My job is usually to express emotion as freely as possible. — Meryl Streep
All an actor has is their blind faith that they are who they say they are today, in any scene. — Meryl Streep
The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays that part. — Miguel de Cervantes
The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen. — Wystan Hugh Auden
I love acting. It is so much more real than life. — Oscar Wilde
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
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
I think your self emerges more clearly over time. — Meryl Streep
The work will stand, no matter what. — Meryl Streep
[Human beings] will begin to recover the moment we take art as seriously as physics, chemistry or money. — Ernst Levy
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… — Oscar Wilde
I think I love and reverence all arts equally, only putting my own just above the others; because in it I recognize the union and… — Charlotte Saunders Cushman
Study, find all the good teachers and study with them, get involved in acting to act, not to be famous or for the money. Do… — Philip Seymour Hoffman
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… — Michael Chekhov
All great art comes from a sense of outrage. — Glenn Close
The theater is a weapon, and it is the people who should wield it. — Augusto Boal
Actor training should be broadly humanistic, involving the study not just of dramatic literature and theatre history, but of languages, literature, and history generally, and… — Richard Hornby
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… — Richard Hornby

Who Wrote These Acting Quotes

2,890 authors contributed a total of 4,873 Acting Quotes, led by these top contributors: