Actors Quotes

“Halloween is a great holiday for any actor if you think about it. It's all about dress-up and playing characters. So yeah, it's always had a special place for me.”
― Nicolas Cage

“Passion needs to be at the heart of the project. Passion is infectious, so the more people who are enthusiastic about the project the better. Where and when a solution or answer does not easily present itself, there needs to be enough belief and energy for the project that still drives the production forward. Without the passion to go through whatever it is that will be thrown your way, you will not make it to opening night.”
― Teddy Hayes, The Guerrilla Guide To Being A Theatrical Producer

“I find the writings of actors to be interesting. Actors are people who are famous for speaking words that others have crafted for them, and very often they themselves are incredibly inarticulate. If they were ducks, they couldn’t even say “quack” without someone writing it for them.”
― Jarod Kintz, Music is fluid, and my saxophone overflows when my ducks slosh in the sounds I make in elevators.

“Wednesdays are for writers, and directors, and actors. Wednesdays are for creating art, and poetry, and poetry in motion. Wednesdays are for protest, and rebellion, and artivism. Wednesdays, are for words from my notebook.”
― N'Zuri Za Austin

“Most of us don't ever get to do the important scenes, all right? ...But--but that's all right, see? Because even if you're just giving 'em a cheap scene, you got their attention.”
― Allie Ray, Suffering Fools

“Only actors, narcissists, and freakishly beautiful people liked seeing themselves on film.”
― Camille Pagán, Good for You

“I was always bad at reading scripts. Back then, I’d be offered millions of dollars to do movies and barely crack the first few pages. I’m embarrassed to admit that now, given that these days I’m writing scripts myself and it’s like pulling teeth to get actors to respond. Maybe they feel how I used to feel: that in a life of fun and fame and money, reading a script, no matter the size of the number attached, feels all too much like school.

The universe will teach you, though. All those years I was too this, too that, to read a script, but last year I wrote a screenplay for myself and was trying get it made until I realized that I was too old to play the part. Most fifty-three-year-olds have worked their shit out already, so I needed to hire a thirty-year-old. The one I chose took weeks and weeks to respond, and I couldn’t believe how rude his behavior was.”
― Matthew Perry, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing

“The only actor who I think probably might have taken a swing at me if he could have would be Burt Reynolds. He used to call Roger and me the Bruise Brothers, out of Chicago.”
― Gene Siskel

“There are people who will tell you you're too old, you're too fat, you're not pretty enough, you're too pretty, you have no talent, you're too weird - you're too something.

Prove them wrong.”
― Eileen Anglin

“The lack of opportunities for Asian Americans in Hollywood conditioned you to be insecure and envious... the success of another Asian person drives you crazy because you were made to believe that there was only one spot available." ...For her, that was the truthful but ugly answer to the question, "What's it like to be an Asian American in Hollywood?" Don't miss the one spot every ten years.”
― Ali Wong, Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, & Advice for Living Your Best Life

“What many producers don’t understand is that lawyers by definition are not trained in solving business problems. They are trained in interpreting and propagating the law based on a set of precedents that have been laid down before. And as each branch of law is an entity unto itself, an entertainment lawyer that normally works in music may not necessarily be useful when dealing with theatre.
 If you want to do a deal that might involve some creative thinking, you would do better to talk with someone that makes deals for a living, for example maybe a salesperson who has developed “outside of the box” thinking in order to make their business rise above that of the competition.
 In my experience lawyers are not by definition the most creative business thinkers.”
― Teddy Hayes, The Guerrilla Guide To Being A Theatrical Producer

“No. We’ve never met any actresses–or actors, for the matter of that–until Sir Charles came to live here. And that,” added Mrs. Babbington, “was a great excitement. I don’t think Sir Charles knows what a wonderful thing it was to us. Quite a breath of romance in our lives.”
― Agatha Christie, Three Act Tragedy

“Hard work is an overrated concept, a 30-second viral video makes you more famous than 10 years of hard work in theater. Historically, Who has been the most hardworking? Farmers right. Who commits the maximum number of suicides due to poverty? Farmers.”
― Anupam S Shlok

“He’s always enjoyed plotlines mediated by on-screen experts, since when things go horribly wrong, eventually there’s an explanation. There’s no ambiguity or confusion when science is involved.”
― Beth Morgan, A Touch of Jen

“The story was okay, but the acting bothered Andrei. Sometimes he would watch a scene and then it would go to the next; Andrei would blink, bewildered at the time that had passed. The film just went by. Scenes would jump to the next but his mind was the same. Why? He noticed that the lead actress in her later years was extremely gorgeous, except some sharp concentration in him blocked out her beauty. This seated heart screamed for the movie to shatter him. And it drew upon him that this was another film that the world was not bothered by of its acting. In fact, they did not even see it. In its short scenes, audiences were hypnotized for an average of five to eight seconds by an actor’s beauty and if the editor timed it right, and with enough spectacle, movies could get away with doing nothing. Gorgeousness stimulated the mind. “Wow, they are so beautiful,” the audience was forced to think—and then by jumping to the next beautiful part fast enough there was something called a movie. And the movie seemed to use the actors’ appearances to drive most of the scenes. And many actors in different scenes sort of just stood there, handsome, and whispering. That was their strategy—mumbling murmurs of breath and rasp. Their indecisive bodies were unnaturally still, as though they had close-ups when the shot was wide. All of the actors’ voices were dumbly lowered to a safe natural cadence while in an unnatural situation and yet seeming real, no actual thought needed to be shown.

'Beauty is good,' says the industry. 'Sell that. Sell beauty! Make it beautiful. Ugly stories about beautiful people. It naturally turns a crap film into a decent one. The people are left with a good impression, as though having watched something fascinating. Make sure to let the camera sit on those beautiful people and their faces will give the audience something impossible to understand and give us runtime while they gaze. But having ugly people in it, people that look like people, actors that look like their audience—er, that’s not so profound,' says the industry. It was why the scenes moved without Andrei knowing: nothing was done by its actors.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, A Happy Ghost

“Every artist loved their art for the same reason, and this caused no suspicion to the world. They regularly say: 'My field captures the human experience.' 'And what is the human experience to you exactly?' questions O’Hare. 'I want to be a storyteller who inspires and expresses their imagination.' 'But how does your chosen art differ from other mediums?' questions O’Hare. 'I am a quiet observer who innately loves philosophy.' But here you are screaming this in a room, cries Dr. O’Hare. 'I am beyond grateful for the people I’ve worked with who made this the greatest collaboration I could have ever asked for.' 'But how did you collaborate—with thought and rehearsal?—or did you just perform some damn thing and sign both your names on it?' asked O’Hare.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, A Happy Ghost

“Proscenium Panther by Stewart Stafford

The actor missed his line,
Whispers from the wings,
Deafening silence hanging,
Another cue came briskly.

A pregnant pause of years,
The frozen player’s lips moved,
Offstage, a mock post-mortem,
The thespian grinned impishly.

After the audience’s first line laugh,
He racked his brain for more jokes,
Flouting the text and all the cast,
O, limelight, of hot-headed hydras.

© Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Some actors are too intimidated to tackle the works of Shakespeare. When, in fact, it is the treasure trove they should be seeking out. There's the depth and complexity of Shakespeare's plays, the richness of the characterisations, the poetic beauty of the language, and the darkest villains in literature to get their teeth into.”
― Stewart Stafford

“It’s neutral creative territory; it’s where we meet when we really want to connect and elevate the game. We’re not here to impose our brand on each other, but to experience, like embodied spiritual hedonists, the richness of what it means to be — well, what it means to exist, period.”
― Laurie Perez, The Look of Amie Martine

“Sometimes we get lost inside the process. In acting, Amie, it’s almost self-destructive, how much we care. How much of the world I let in and choose to feel. It can be overwhelming if you’re not prepared.”
― Laurie Perez, The Look of Amie Martine

“The irony of being an artist is that most of the world assumes you're busy messing about in a fog of make-believe when the reality is much more dangerous than that: artists are busy seeking the truth.”
― Jill Szoó Wilson

“The suicide note read " Dear World: I am leaving because I am bored.I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool.”
― Kenneth Anger, Hollywood Babylon II

“We’re the ones who’ve chosen this role in life, to be taproots sucking on the juice of human consciousness.”
― Laurie Perez, The Look of Amie Martine

“If you use stunt doubles to do your stunts, you don't deserve an ounce of respect as an actor – use stunt doubles to teach you those stunts instead, then do them yourself on camera.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Yaralardan Yangın Doğar: Explorers of Night are Emperors of Dawn

“Old age makeup makes young actors look like turtles.”
― Gene Siskel

“For many actors their best performances are not in any movie or on any stage, but rather perfecting a public image of themselves having moral character and virtue, which is usually the opposite of what they are in in reality, behind closed doors.”
― Jack Freestone

“It is time to accept that most of our heroes were not, are not, heroes. They were just good actors selected by the cult, due to bloodlines, or secret society membership.”
― Jack Freestone

“Hollywood is a collection of people without souls, pretending to be people with souls.”
― Jack Freestone

“Böylece sürüp gidecek, yazıdan daha eski bir meslek, yazılı söz ortadan kaybolduğunda da muhtemelen ayakta kalacaktı. Filmlerin, televizyonun ve radyonun bütün o kısır kerametleri onu ortadan kaldırmayı başaramayacaktı: canlı bir seyirciyle iletişim halindeki canlı bir adam. Peki nasıl yaşıyordu? Dostları kimlerdi? Gizli hayatı nasıldı? Haklıydı. Çıkıp gitmesi soruları kışkırtmıştı.”
― John Steinbeck

“Nic Cage excelled at making love look dangerous.”
― Zach Schonfeld, How Coppola Became Cage