Acting Quotes - Page 34

• One half of the pleasure experienced at a theatre arises from the spectator's sympathy with the rest of the audience, and, especially from his belief in their sympathy with him.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Theatre, Half, Belief

  Edgar Allan Poe (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe (Illustrated)”, p.2179, Delphi Classics

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• TV acting is so extremely intimate, because of the peculiar involvement of the viewer with the completion or "closing" of the TV image, that the actor must achieve a great degree of spontaneous casualness that would be irrelevant in movie and lost on the stage. For the audience participates in the inner life of the TV actor as fully as in the outer life of the movie star. Technically, TV tends to be a close-up medium. The close-up that in the movie is used for shock is, on TV, a quite casual thing.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Stars, Actors, Television

  Marshall McLuhan (1964). “Understanding media: the extensions of man”

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• I am in the theatrical profession myself, my wife is in the theatrical profession, my children are in the theatrical profession.I had a dog that lived and died in it from a puppy; and my chaise-pony goes on, in Timour the Tartar.

  Charles Dickens

  Dog, Children, Wife

  Charles Dickens (1867). “Charles Dickens's works. Charles Dickens ed. [18 vols. of a 21 vol. set. Wanting A child's history of England; Christmas stories; The mystery of Edwin Drood].”, p.177

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• An inebriated elderly gentleman in the last depths of shabbiness... played the calm and virtuous old men.

  Charles Dickens

  Men, Elderly, Gentleman

  Charles Dickens (1867). “The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby”, p.182

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• Acting is a child's prerogative. Children are born to act. Usually, people grow up and out of it. Actors always seem to me to be people who never quite did grow out of it.

  Joanne Woodward

  Children, Growing Up, People

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• It's not the possibility of Stalinism in the U.S. that's worrying me, it's the fact that the Stalinist C.P. seems doomed to fail and to bring down with it all the humanitarian tendencies I personally believe in--all the while acting as a mould on which its obverse the fascist mentality is made--and this recent massacre is certainly a sign of Stalinism's weakness not of its strength. None of that has anything to do with Marx's work--but it certainly does influence one's attitude towards a given political party.

  John Dos Passos

  Attitude, Party, Believe

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• The true fanatic is a theocrat, someone who sees himself as acting on behalf of some super-personal force: the Race, the Party, History, the Proletariat, the Poor, and so on. These absolve him from evil, hence he may safely do anything in their service.

  Lloyd Billingsley

  Party, Race, Evil

  Lloyd Billingsley (1986). “Religion's rebel son: fanaticism in our time”, Multnomah Pub

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• Next to an old-fashioned church social, or possibly a monster bridge party, there is no buzz which can equal the sibilant buzz ofa matinée.

  Robert Benchley

  Party, Bridges, Church

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• It had been drilled into us that when an audience pays to see a performance, it is entitled to the best performance you can give.Nothing in your personal life must interfere, neither fatigue, illness, nor anxiety--not even joy.

  Lillian Gish

  Giving, Joy, Anxiety

  Lillian Gish (1969). “The Movies, Mr. Grifith, and Me”

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• Too many Broadway actors in motion pictures lost their grip on success--had a feeling that none of it had ever happened on that sun-drenched coast, that the coast itself did not exist, there was no California. It had dropped away like a hasty dream and nothing could ever have been like the things they thought they remembered.

  Mae West

  Movie, Dream, California

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• When I read, it is not acted literature; but what I write is written acting.

  Karl Kraus

  Reading, Writing, Literature

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & one-and-a-half truths: selected aphorisms”

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• I'm an expert in hookers. I'm an expert in doormats. I'm an expert in victims. They were the best parts. And when I woke up--sociologically, politically, and creatively--I could no longer take those parts and look in the mirror.

  Shirley MacLaine

  Movie, Mirrors, Experts

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• The pickings are pretty slim when you have to play the part of a housewife who doesn't go out of her apartment because she's afraid she's going to get mugged, or a woman who turns into her brother, who is a murderer.

  Shirley MacLaine

  Movie, Brother, Play

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• Surely, 'tis one step towards acting well, to think worthily of our nature; and as in common life, the way to make a man honest, is, to suppose him soso here, to set some value upon ourselves, enables us to support the characterof generosity and virtue.

  Laurence Sterne

  Character, Men, Thinking

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• Directors like Satyajit Ray, Rossellini, Bresson, Buñuel, Forman, Scorsese, and Spike Lee have used non-professional actors precisely in order that the people we see on the screen may be scarcely more explained than reality itself. Professionals, except fo the greatest, usually play not just the necessary role, but an explanation of the role.

  John Berger

  Reality, Order, Play

  John Berger (2014). “Selected Essays of John Berger”, p.480, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Each religion is a brave guess at the authorship of Hamlet. Yet, as far as the play goes, does it make any difference whether Shakespeare or Bacon wrote it? Would it make any difference to the actors if their parts happened out of nothingness, if they found themselves acting on the stage because of some gross and unpardonable accident? Would it make any difference if the playwright gave them the lines or whether they composed them themselves, so long as the lines were properly spoken? Would it make any difference to the characters if 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' was really a dream?

  Lewis Mumford

  God, Dream, Character

  "My Works and Days". Book by Lewis Mumford. Chapter 2, 1979.

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• The uppermost idea with Hellenism is to see things as they really are; the uppermost ideas with Hebraism is conduct and obedience.Nothing can do away with this ineffaceable difference. The Greek quarrel with the body and its desires is, that they hinder right thinking; the Hebrew quarrel with them is, that they hinder right acting.

  Matthew Arnold

  Thinking, Ideas, Differences

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• Monroe, the consummate sexual doll, is empowered to act but afraid to act, perhaps because no amount of acting, however inspired,can convince the actor herself that her ideal female life is not a dreadful form of dying.

  Andrea Dworkin

  Dying, Dolls, Female

  Andrea Dworkin (1983). “Right-wing women: the politics of domesticated females”

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• Discipline is the quality that carries over from gymnastics to acting.

  Mitch Gaylord

  Gymnastics, Discipline, Quality

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• Ibsen is like this room where we are sitting, with all the tables and chairs. Do I care whether you have twenty or twenty-five links on your chain? Hedda Gabler, Nora and the rest: it is not that I want! I want Rome and the Coliseum, the Acropolis, Athens; I want beauty, and the flame of life.

  Eleanora Duse

  Beauty, Rome, Flames

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• If I were twenty or thirty years younger, I would start afresh in this field with the certainty of accomplishing much. But I should have to learn from the bottom up, forgetting the theatre entirely and concentrating on the special medium of this new art. My mistake, and that of many others, lay in employing "theatrical" techniques despite every effort to avoid them. Here is something quite, quite fresh, a penetrating form of visual poetry, an untried exponent of the human soul. Alas, I am too old for it!

  Eleanora Duse

  Movie, Art, Mistake

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• To insult a friend implies that you respect his masculinity enough to know he can take it without acting like a crybaby. The swapping of insults, like the fighting between brothers, becomes the seal of the male bonding.

  Frank Pittman

  Brother, Fighting, Males

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• ... actors of the first water are not more plentiful than playwrights of genius.

  Sarah Bernhardt

  Water, Genius, Actors

  Sarah Bernhardt (1924). “The Art of the Theatre”

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• The artist's personality must be left in his dressing-room; his soul must be denuded of its own sensations and clothed with the base or noble qualities he is called upon to exhibit.... [he] must leave behind him the cares and vexations of life, throw aside his personality for several hours, and move in the dream of another life, forgetting everything.

  Sarah Bernhardt

  Dream, Moving, Artist

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• I refuse the title of artist to those who owe their reputations to a physical deformity. I regard them as buffoons.

  Sarah Bernhardt

  Artist, Titles, Actors

  Sarah Bernhardt (1924). “The Art of the Theatre”

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