Acting Quotes - Page 14

• Acting is not about being someone different. It's finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there.

  Meryl Streep

  Inspirational, Motivational, Different

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• I'd be more frightened by not using whatever abilities I'd been given. I'd be more frightened by procrastination and laziness.

  Denzel Washington

  Life, Success, Faith

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• 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

  Emotional, Discovery, Granted

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• 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

  Character, Fighting, Want

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• All an actor has is their blind faith that they are who they say they are today, in any scene.

  Meryl Streep

  Faith, Blind Belief, Actors

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• 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

  Choices, Theatre, Needs

  Michael Shurtleff (2009). “Audition: Everything an Actor Needs to Know to Get the Part”, p.134, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• An actor is looking for conflict. Conflict is what creates drama. We are taught to avoid trouble [so] actors don't realize they must go looking for it. Plays are written about...the extraordinary, the unusual, the climaxes. The more conflict actors find, the more interesting the performance.

  Michael Shurtleff

  Drama, Play, Interesting

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• I learned much more about acting from philosophy courses, psychology courses, history and anthropology than I ever learned in acting class.

  Tim Robbins

  Inspirational, Motivational, Philosophy

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• A true priest is aware of the presence of the altar during every moment that he is conducting a service. It is exactly the same way that a true artist should react to the stage all the time he is in the theater. An actor who is incapable of this feeling will never be a true artist.

  Constantin Stanislavski

  Artist, Feelings, Way

  Constantin Stanislavski (2013). “Building a Character”, p.216, A&C Black

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• Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.

  George Eliot

  Play, Ideas, Best Acting

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• You must have a twinkle in your eye, a naughtiness - and the audience must realize your mind is working faster than your words.

  Jeremy Brett

  Eye, Mind, Realizing

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• Acting means living, it's all I do.

  Morgan Freeman

  Mean, African American

  "Morgan Freeman: 10 things you need to know about the Oscar-nominated actor". www.mirror.co.uk. February 18, 2010.

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• I don't think anybody can be told how to act. I think you can give advice. But you have to find your own way through it.

  Judi Dench

  Thinking, Giving, Advice

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Competition is healthy. Competition is life. Yet most actors refuse to acknowledge this. They don't want to compete. They want to get along. And they are therefore not first-rate actors. The good actor is the one who competes, willingly, who enjoys competing. An actor must compete, or die...Peacefulness and the avoidance of trouble won't help in his acting. It is just the opposite he must seek.

  Michael Shurtleff

  Opposites, Competition, Healthy

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• When student-actors see people and the way they behave when together, see the color of the sky, hear the sounds in the air, feel the ground beneath them and the wind on their faces, they get a wider view of their personal world and development in the theater is quickened. The world provides the material for the theater and artistic growth develops hand-in-hand with one's recognition of it and one's self within it.

  Viola Spolin

  Air, Self, Views

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• With Othello, Shakespeare posed this problem of a black man in a white society in the role that he's playing. And Shakespeare gave Othello such dignity - he came not from - as he said - not from hate but from honor, from a sense of his own human dignity. And to me, to my mind, there could be no greater character played.

  Paul Robeson

  Hate, Character, Men

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• Our everyday self is a narrow construct...Our total self is far broader, ultimately infinite. Actors who seem to be playing themselves are actually playing roles they have become so skillful at that they seem pure and natural...Much bad Acting is the result of being too close to the Actor's everyday self, confining him in its rigid mold.

  Richard Hornby

  Self, Everyday, Mold

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• Emotional release by itself, no matter how "real," "honest," etc. the emotion may be, is never enough to create a character...such release has no artistic form.

  Richard Hornby

  Real, Character, Emotional

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• You are the spokesman for your character, you put on his case. Are you going to win or lose? There'll be no drama if you look like a loser at the outset.

  Clive Swift

  Drama, Character, Winning

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• An expression of feeling isn't worth anything unless it interferes with what the other actor in the scene wants.

  Michael Shurtleff

  Expression, Feelings, Actors

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• The [Great] Actor is able to approach in himself a cosmic dread as large as life. He is able to go from his dread to a joy so sweet that it is without limit. Only then will the actor have direct access to the life that moves in him, which is as free as his breathing. And like his breathing, he doesn't cause it to happen. He doesn't contain it, and it doesn't contain him.

  Joseph Chaikin

  Sweet, Moving, Breathing

  Joseph Chaikin (1993). “The Presence of the Actor”, p.10, Theatre Communications Group

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• At the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre, Sanford Meisner said, 'When you go into the professional world, at a stock theatre somewhere, backstage, you will meet an older actor, someone who has been around awhile. He will tell you tales and anecdotes, about life in the theatre. He will speak to you about your performance and the performances of others, and he will generalize to you, based on his experience and his intuitions, about the laws of the stage. Ignore this man!'

  David Mamet

  School, Men, Law

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• The truth of ourselves is the root of our acting.

  Sanford Meisner

  Roots, Theatre

  Sanford Meisner, Dennis Longwell (2012). “Sanford Meisner on Acting”, p.45, Vintage

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• What is acting but lying and what is good lying but convincing lying?

  Laurence Olivier

  Lying, Convincing, Good Actors

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• I jumped into acting because it was fun. It was tougher when I had to take my fun seriously.

  Chris Noth

  Fun

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