Quotes & Sayings About Acting Shakespeare

I have been doing acting my whole life. I did plays in high school. I take it pretty seriously. I used to do a lot of Shakespeare and Shakespearean festivals and monologues. — Vinny Guadagnino

My first acting lessons were Shakespeare. The first time I ever started working with a coach was doing scenes from 'Measure for Measure,' which were tough dramatic scenes. And then 'Taming of the Shrew,' which required comedic timing. And that's the kind of stuff I love. — Dave Bautista

All that makes a writer is the ability to write strongly and directly from some unaccountable and almost invincible personal prejudice like Stevensons in favor of all being happy as kings no matter if consumptive, or Hardy against God for the blunder of sex, or Sinclair Lewis' against small American towns, or Shakespeare's mixed, at once against and in favor of life itself. I take it that everybody has the prejudice and spends some time feeling for it to speak and write from. But most people end as they begin by acting out the prejudices of other people. — Robert Frost

The king-becoming graces,
As justice, verity, temp'rance, stableness,
Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness,
Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude,
I have no relish of them, but abound
In the division of each several crime,
Acting in many ways. — William Shakespeare

The play's the thing. — William Shakespeare

How strange or odd some'er I bear myself,
As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on. — William Shakespeare

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. — William Shakespeare

You must write as if Dostoyevsky himself will be reading your novel, and Shakespeare will be acting it out. — Christina Westover

I wanted to play a TV detective because it's a rite of passage; I wanted to experience every area of acting. I haven't done comedy or as much Shakespeare as I had intended. — Olivia Williams

All I ever wanted to do was be on stage, if possible acting in Shakespeare. And to be as good as I could be.There was nowhere else I wanted to go. TV was of no interest. Films were just a fantasy. Yet I was convinced that when we found ourselves in that world of fantasy and sci-fi, it was our classical background and our training that equipped us for that larger-than life-world. — Patrick Stewart

I have not slept.
Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream:
The Genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection. — William Shakespeare

Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma or a hideous dream. — William Shakespeare

Having grown up in the theater family, having done a huge amount of acting from a very little boy to precocious teenager in Shakespeare festivals that my father produced, I went off to college and fell in with the theater gang. I was already an experienced actor. I became a kind of campus star. I heard all this applause and laughter. — John Lithgow

My first time acting for camera really was for Steven Spielberg in War Horse. I was trained in theater and I was actually working in theater at the time. I had a small role with the Royal Shakespeare Company, which is a huge prestigious theater company back in England. I honestly thought that was as good as it got. — Jeremy Irvine

Like a dull actor now, I have forgot my part, and I am out, Even to a full disgrace. — William Shakespeare

I've been acting since I was six. I actually played a boy when I was six in 'Tommy.' I played Tommy and they put a wig on me. They put up my hair and put this little boy wig on me and that was my first acting experience. Then I did some other professional theater. I did Shakespeare when I was older. — Jojo

African-Americans are always forced to learn the other culture, but the other culture is not forced to learn ours. I went to acting school at Juilliard, and we learned Shakespeare and Shaw, but we never did the work of a single African-American playwright, not August Wilson or Ntozake Shange or Imir Baraka. — Tracie Thoms

I can counterfeit the deep tragedian;
Speak and look back, and pry on every side,
Tremble and start, at wagging of a straw,
Intending deep suspicion. — William Shakespeare

Juilliard is wonderful in that they don't pick just one way of working. They give you a palette. There is method acting. There is a lot of attention to Shakespeare and verse. — Christian Camargo

I've read all of Shakespeare and practiced a lot of lines ... I am going to do Juliet first. Don't laugh. What, with what makeup, costume and camera can do, my acting will create a Juliet who is 14, an innocent virgin. — Marilyn Monroe

Before acting, I was always attracted to words, to literature - be they the words of Williams, Arthur Miller, Shakespeare or Moliere. — Michael Mando

When I first started acting, and we would all sit down and talk about Shakespeare and how great it was. I thought well, I suppose it is. — Judy Davis

I went to NYU Tisch for undergrad, and it was amazing. My life then was extremely experimental with acting. I did crazy theater where we would be rolling around on the floor. I would be playing grandmothers, and clowns, and all this crazy stuff. Then I would be doing Shakespeare eight hours a day. — Katie Lowes

I don't make much distinction between being a stand-up comic and acting Shakespeare - in fact, unless you're a good comedian, you're never going to be able to play Hamlet properly. — Ian McKellen

All the world's a stage. — William Shakespeare

The church itself has got to go outside of its own borders and carry the Gospel to every creature, or it is no church of Christ; and any mutual improvement club which thinks that by reading its Shakespeare, or by acting its pretty tableaux, or by having this or that little reading from Spenser and from Chaucer, it is going to lift itself up into any higher order of culture or life, is wholly mistaken, unless as an essential part of its duty, it goes out into the world, finds those that are falling down, and lifts them up to the majesty of freemen, who are sons of God. — Edward Everett Hale

Let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them. — William Shakespeare

At the beginning of my acting career, I worked for two seasons at the RSC and spent a lot of time in the Cotswolds exploring Shakespeare's countryside. It's my kind of English landscape, with its tiny villages and one-room thatched pubs. — Cherie Lunghi

When I was about 16 or 17, I had a teacher who took a group of us to the National Theater in Washington, D.C., and I saw Ian McKellen do his one-man show - I think it was called Acting Shakespeare - and it completely bombed me; it put the zap on my brain in a big way. — Edward Norton

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

Twenty years earlier, in a life [Kirsten] mostly couldn't remember, she had had a small nonspeaking role in a short-lived Toronto production of King Lear. Now she walked in sandals whose soles had been cut from an automobile tire, three knives in her belt. — Emily St. John Mandel

Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts. — William Shakespeare

Shakespeare in Love ... such smart writing of an alternative view of history, and such beautiful acting. Like most Americans, I'm a sucker for the accent. — Anita Diament

Happiness was useless to me. It was heartache that filled my purse. What happy man has need of Shakespeare? — Jennifer Donnelly

I didn't want to be the archetypal sponging brother-in-law, so I didn't go into acting when I got to the States. I thought, 'No, I'll go to school and then I'll be an English teacher; that'll be fun.' But I was horrible as a teacher. As hard as I tried, I just couldn't inspire those kids to take an interest in Milton and Shakespeare and Donne. — John Mahoney

This is the Jew that Shakespeare drew. — Philip Massinger

Once an actor told me he went to the Shakespeare School of Acting, and I said, 'I went to the Shakespeare of Acting, too' and he said, 'Oh really?' And I said, 'I went to Shakespeare Elementary School in Chicago.' He didn't take the joke well, he didn't laugh and didn't think it was funny - I thought it was funny. It's all the same to me. — Michael Clarke Duncan

If I'm serious, yes, I'd like to have done what Shakespeare did ... to act and write. You learn so much from acting. One of our great writers, Alan Bennett, does both supremely well. When I write a story, I tend to speak it aloud as I'm writing it. — Michael Morpurgo

My background is in largely in theatre and acting. I grew up in a town with a well-respected Shakespeare Festival, and I fell in with some kids whose parents worked there. We staged all-kid versions of 'Hamlet', 'Cymbeline', a few others. All the while, I was making short films; monster movies, slapstick comedies, claymation. — Matt Ross

If there is a streak of ham anywhere in an actor, Shakespeare will bring it out. — Robert Benchley

I play guitar; you'll find me at home strumming 'Vincent' on the guitar. I also read a lot of poetry, and Shakespeare was my first love, which was why I got into acting. A lot of the fighters are intelligent! — Dave Legeno

My grief lies all within; and these external manner of laments are merely shadows of the unseen grief that swells with silence in the tortur'd soul. — William Shakespeare

I got an M.F.A. in acting from NYU, and part of our training is to learn how to use swords in combat situations in a performance and Shakespeare plays where you have to fight. — Danai Gurira

With acting, I started very young, and I'd performed for a lot of children in boarding schools, late at night after the dormitory lights were out. I'd have a flashlight, and I'd be Count Dracula, or Shakespeare, or Yogi Bear, and leap from bunk to bunk. I loved the laughter; I liked the way it made people feel. — C. C. H. Pounder

It was in India that I started my acting career, courtesy of my parents, long before I set foot on stage in England. They headed a company of travelling players performing Shakespeare up and down the land. — Felicity Kendal

And to Shakespeare I owe my vision of the world as a theater, wherein all humans are acting out their parts. — James Broughton

I've stopped acting, but I don't think I've finished using my voice. I could, and probably will, record the whole of Shakespeare's sonnets. They live at the side of my bed and are my constant companions. — Peter O'Toole

Totus mundus agit histrionem. (All the World's a Stage.)
[Motto of William Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (f. 1599) and its acting company, The King's Men; taken from the first play to be performed on the new stage.] — William Shakespeare

I did some professional radio acting as a teenager, and I essentially put myself through college with radio acting in Montreal. When I graduated, I got jobs in professional theatres, repertory, and stock theatres in Canada for a couple of years. And then I went to Stratford, Ontario, where I spent three years with a Shakespeare company. We took a classical play from Stratford to New York City, and I got some good notices there and essentially stayed and did live television. And that brings you to the beginning of filming. — William Shatner

When you're playing Shakespeare, it forces you to think and feel and speak all at the same time, which really is what acting is. It expands your imagination and expands your size of thinking. — Andre Holland