Actors And Life Quotes & Sayings

Good actors I've worked with all started out making faces in a mirror, and you keep making faces all your life. — Bette Davis

That is why it has been repeatedly noticed that the human life is a theatre where the mask show takes place, and we are merely the actors of that show, having entirely identified ourselves with the masks and fooling not only others, but first of all ourselves. — Arvydas Sliogeris

There's something about the alchemy of the show - the actors, the writers, the directors, the editors - that makes 'Parenthood' unique. You get so deeply embedded with these characters because you go through life with them, and that's our priority. — Jason Katims

Actors always want to know how I come up with interesting and creative takes on characters, characters that aren't like me as I appear in daily life and that aren't like each other. It's simple: I let the lines and images connect with my imagination. I don't worry about consistency; I let myself respond moment by moment, piecemeal, to the character's dialogue and actions. Then I let my responses take me wherever they go, making mistakes and discarding them until choices start repeating themselves on their own no matter how arbitrary they seem at first. Then I know I'm on to something. But I don't try to put the character together. I leave it in pieces. The script and story put the character together so my moment by moment performance seems like a creative take on the whole character. — Harold Guskin

When searching for harmony in life one must never forget that in the drama of existence we are ourselves both actors and spectators. — Niels Bohr

I am a close friend of Robert Loggia. And I just love how, with actors, there's the screen persona. Here is Robert, known for his portrayal of many characters, including gangsters. But in real life, he is elegant and erudite. He sits in the garden reading the sonnets of William Shakespeare. — Luanne Rice

I've been given lots of great advice, in my life. As an actor, just being as honest and as present as you can be. — Rachel McAdams

It's weird: making a movie is like life compacted into three months. You have these very intense relationships with people, and you talk to them every day - your editor, the casting people, music people, your actors - then it ends. It's like a circus life. — Dito Montiel

My biggest problem in my life is I'm cheap and I didn't hire a publicist. In every awkward interview, normally actors get these things scripted. — Robert Pattinson

I told him that it was very fine for well-fed, over-paid actors flaunting toughness at these deprived people, who are gentle and nice and, if ever tough, only so because of environment. I asked him how tough he would be if he were living the life that some of these unfortunate families must live. How easy for him, with five meals a day beneath that thrust-out chest with his muscles trained and perfect, trying to start something with these people. Of course they were not tough, but when it comes to four years of War, when it comes to losing an arm or a leg, then they are tough. But they are not going around looking for fights unless there is a reason. — Charlie Chaplin

Actors ought to be larger than life. You come across quite enough ordinary, nondescript people in daily life and I don't see why you should be subjected to them on the stage too. — Ninon De L'Enclos

The first time I ever heard professional actors delivering lines that I wrote was completely surreal and was just a gigantic moment in my life. It was just a little bit mind-blowing and completely strange to have something that had been on my computer being said out loud. — Andrea Seigel

I come from a very expressive family, so it's really not surprising that we became actors. There was a lot of real-life drama in our house. Some of it was drama, some of it was comedy and some of it was comic-tragedy. — John Turturro

My father and I used to tussle about me becoming an actor. He's from strong, Presbyterian Scottish working-class stock, and he used to sit me down and say, 'You know, 99 percent of actors are out of work. You've been educated, so why do you want to spend your life pretending to be someone else when you could be your own man?' — Tom Hiddleston

I realize I have a lot of amazing opportunities, but I don't know how you can play a human being going through real human experiences without being able to walk down the street. If you can't live a real life, how do you play a real person? It always confuses me when actors work back-to-back-to-back with no break. If you live your life on a film set, how the hell can you relate to real people? You don't know what its like to not have people fussing over you all day, and that's not life - that's silly movies. I will always want to take breaks and I wouldn't be OK with losing that. — Emma Stone

Too often in their church life people adopt an attitude of the theater, imagining the preacher is an actor and they his critics, praising and blaming the performances. Actually, the people are the actors on the stage of life. The preacher is merely the prompter, reminding the people of their lost lines. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

Uta Hagen is our greatest living actor; she is, moreover, interested and mystified by the presence of talent and its workings; her third gift is a passion to communicate the mysteries of the craft to which she has given her life. There are almost no American actors uninfluenced by her. — Fritz Weaver

Actors are part of a certain percentage of people on this planet who have an emotional vocabulary as a primary experience. It's as if their life is experienced emotionally and then that is translated intellectually or conceptually into the performance. — Mary McDonnell

You know, I think a lot of times what happens when we as actors know we're playing a bad guy is we get into bad guy mode. You know what, man? In real life, bad people do good things too and good people do bad things. So you don't necessarily have to be the stereotypical bad guy to still do bad things. — Laz Alonso

I find actors who play nasty guys in movies are the nicest guys in real life, and the opposite then goes for heroes. — Jonathan Rhys Meyers

It's a brutal world out there. If you consider the case of superstar Rajesh Khanna, he was a darling of the masses in his hey days, and his fans resurfaced only after he passed away. Such is the life of actors: one gets so addicted to fame and glory, and then it is very difficult to accept a fall. You are forgotten and only remembered when you die! — Bipasha Basu

I love those moments on stage, on screen and in life when you dispense with language, when you sort of transcend it in a way, and certainly the experience of falling in love, I think, defies words, which is why poets, painters, musicians, actors have tried to describe that feeling, writers have just tried to put words to that. — Cate Blanchett

Like actors and writers who are on and off again in terms of employment, I had a very unstructured life. — Buzz Aldrin

Did this happen to all actors, this blurring of borders between performance and life? — Emily St. John Mandel

Your job, as an actor, is never to just do what you're told. That's boring, and life is too short. It's your job to bring something, and it will either be to other people's taste or your own taste, and you have to try things out. Actors say, "Well, as long as the director's happy," but I don't believe that and I don't agree with that. I want the director to be happy, but if I'm not happy, I won't sleep at night. — Martin Freeman

I don't want to restrict the life of a play to a particular production. The original actors might leave after the first six months, and I want the play to last 30 or 40 years. You write for the character, not the actor on the stage. — Neil Simon

Well, I'm a character actor, and actually throughout my life I've ... I have relatively speaking played few heroic leads, but I've done it. — Rene Auberjonois

Most of my experiences have been positive. I know I live a very good life. I'm severely overpaid, but there are people who are much more overpaid than I am. I've been very lucky, and I know that, because I see guys all the time who are struggling and can't make a dime, and they're much better actors than me. — Kurt Fuller

I went to an ordinary school in New York City with no other actors. I learned to compartmentalise different parts of my life. I was one person at home and then another person at work and for that reason my career didn't challenge my family life. — Brooke Shields

I love it when you ask actors, 'What are you Doing now?' and they say 'I'm between roles'. To be living 'life between roles' that's my favorite — Andy Warhol

I'd be terrified even now for a Latin kid wanting to be an actor, but back then? Forget it. They must have thought I was going to be working in restaurants and driving cabs for the rest of my life. — John Leguizamo

In the scenes of moral life the soul is at once actor and spectator. — Joseph Marie, Baron De Gerando

Aren't you tired from all that smiling that you do at the camera? Relax and come with me to the mountains. There is more to life than the cameras! — Avijeet Das

Like most others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles - a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going. — Hunter S. Thompson

I'm not an actor, and I'll never call myself an actor. I've never thought of it as part of my life. I'll always be a singer, in my eyes. — Glen Hansard

There are some tremendous actors in the U.K. who have been knighted, and I've spent much of my life admiring many of them, like Laurence Olivier. So it's very flattering to be in their company. — Ian McKellen

I want actors. I want to be with other people. I don't wanna be alone, because of the connection when you're in a room, in a scene with someone, and it comes to life. You feel like the moment is something magic. — Noomi Rapace

A film is born in my head and I kill it on paper. It is brought back to life by the actors and then killed in the camera. It is then resurrected into a third and final life in the editing room where the dismembered pieces are assembled into their finished form. — Robert Bresson

Most of my friends are not actors. Most people have an idea of what an actor's life is, and it's pure glamour and excitement: it's easy and free and everyone loves you. But with a certain level of fame, there's a real level of paranoia and depression that comes with what you do, that nobody talks about. — Cush Jumbo

In my personal life I'm very conservative. I've been married to the same person for nearly 50 years, I'm scrupulous about paying bills, avoiding debt. I'm very careful. But as an actor I'm pretty reckless. I've done a lot of things that, when I see myself on screen, I have to shut my eyes. And I've made a whole bunch of movies that nobody sees, including me. — Christopher Walken

I want stuff to play as wide as possible. I want to be able to see ... if I could play the whole thing in a master and it could be compelling enough, that'd be great. Then it simplifies my day, it simplifies life for the actors when you could just focus on that. But by the same token I don't want to be forced into coverage. So I want it to be as good from every angle and I need to get as many of the kind of shadings that I want from every angle. — David Fincher

People often say that you should never work with child actors. I think that's all wrong. Children have not had the imagination kicked out of them by life experience and adulthood. So, they still are very much alive with that kind of magical thinking which enables an actor to believe they're in these circumstances and make them real to you. — Nicolas Cage

Actors sometimes immerse themselves into it so deeply that the line between who they are and their character can become blurred. For me, I think it's just about getting clearer on my whole life and who I am in order to make it possible for me to play whatever character is presented to me at a particular time. — Christian Slater

I see a lot of actors for whom life becomes one big schedule. I guess I try to be more sensitive to my private life - to take a breath of fresh air and be in the countryside or on a golf course. — Gerard Butler

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. — William Shakespeare

Actors are exposed in a way that nobody else can understand. They are subject to the likes and dislikes of people their entire life, no matter how successful they are. At the same time, in order to be liked, you have to not be yourself. So it's a very complicated human exercise - an alchemy that I have never understood. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

He's quite extraordinary with his moves and spins. I think he was a baton girl in a past life [on his co-star Hayden Christensen]. — Ewan McGregor

Despite their claims to a purely scientific and reasoned approach, the relationship of Modernist architects to their work remained at base a romantic one; they looked to architecture to support a way of life that appealed to them. Their domestic buildings were conceived as stage sets for actors in an idealised drama about contemporary existence. — Alain De Botton

Hollywood is the kind of town that likes to make everything larger than life: movie premieres, aging actress' lips, and murders. Actors come from all over the world to find their sliver of fame on the street of L.A. Many stars rise, but many more fall. — Rob Manuel

Shooting in real-life situations helps actors because they're competing against the noise and the wind. Out of that comes things that shift and change, in terms of tone, but not in terms of re-honing the whole sequence. — Tony Scott

You're out there on a high wire without a net, and that's the way actors operate. They have to be fearless about how they work and they have to create a life for the audience in 90 minutes and make them believe. — Charles Durning

All life is theatre,' he said. 'We are all actors, you and I, in a play which nobody wrote and which nobody will see. We have no audience but ourselves ... — Susan Cooper

When we started talking to our actors and to our directors, this is with all due respect to the film, if you want to know what we're not doing, go watch the movie. If you want to know what we're doing, it's very much steeped in the world of the comics, but it also has a life of its own and that's really what television and our films really do is that we take the best ... We hope and we're very confident that this is the beginning of something that's very exciting on Netflix. — Jeph Loeb

With just about every script, in almost every corner of the set, I was faced with the truth: This was my parents' life. My mother had sat in handcuffs; my father had once worn an orange jumpsuit like the dozens that sat folded in our wardrobe department. For the other actors and me on our show, this was all fantasy, the re-creation of a world we knew little about; for Mami and Papi, it could not have been any more real or painful...I've had so many scenes in which Flaca & I are doing the dirty work, like cleaning the kitchen or mopping the floors, which is when I think of my parents most. Long before they ended up in prison, they'd spent years handling the nastiest jobs, the ones often avoided by others. Manual labor. Low pay. No respect. They must've felt so trapped. It must've been so hard for them to maintain their dignity when others looked down on them or, worse, didn't see them at all. — Diane Guerrero

We are not consumers. For most of humanity's existence, we were makers, not consumers: we made our clothes, shelter, and education, we hunted and gathered our food.
We are not addicts. "I propose that most addictions come from our surrendering our real powers, that is, our powers of creativity." We are not passive couch potatoes either. "It is not the essence of humans to be passive. We are players. We are actors on many stages ... . We are curious, we are yearning to wonder, we are longing to be amazed ... to be excited, to be enthusiastic, to be expressive. In short to be alive." We are also not cogs in a machine. To be so would be to give up our personal freedoms so as to not upset The Machine, whatever that machine is. Creativity keeps us creating the life we wish to live and advancing humanity's purpose as well. — Matthew Fox

Historically, actors have been made very famous for roles that were something that was far - - Richard Widmark comes to mind (playing Tommy Udo in "Kiss of Death") or something like that, where you do some famous role and everybody imitates you for the rest of your life. But obviously it's much more fun to play something you're not than it is to play something you are. — Clint Eastwood

The audience had run to beards and magenta shirts and original ways of arranging its neckwear; and not content with the ravages produced in its over-excitable nervous system by the remorseless workings of its critical intelligence, it had sat through a film of Japanese life called 'Yes,' made by a Norwegian film company in 1915 with Japanese actors, which lasted an hour and three-quarters and contained twelve close-ups of water-lilies lying perfectly still on a scummy pond and four suicides, all done extremely slowly. — Stella Gibbons

It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such
an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their
absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack
of style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us
an impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that.
Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of
beauty crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, the
whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly
we find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the
play. Or rather we are both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder
of the spectacle enthralls us. — Oscar Wilde

Charles's conversation was as flat as a sidewalk, and everyone's ideas filed along it in their ordinary clothes, exciting no emotion, no laughter, no reverie. He had never been curious, he said, when he lived in Rouen, to go to the theater and see the actors from Paris. He did not know how to swim, or fence, or fire a pistol, and he could not explain to her, one day, a riding term she had come upon in a novel.

But shouldn't a man know everything, excel at a host of different activities, initiate you into the intensities of passion, the refinements of life, all its mysteries? Yet this man taught her nothing, knew nothing, wished for nothing. He thought she was happy; and she resented him for that settled calm, that ponderous serenity, that very happiness which she herself brought him. — Gustave Flaubert

We exaggerate the difference between documentary and fiction. I think that on some level a fiction film is also a documentary on the actors. You can't wash away your life's history, which is written on your face, unless you get a facelift. — Pirjo Honkasalo

In 2007, my life changed forever. I signed on 'Tashan,' a full-on glamorous masala movie, with two of the hottest and fittest actors around: Akshay Kumar and Saif Ali Khan. And me, rising out of the sea like a Bond girl, wearing nothing but a green bikini. I had nightmares of how my love handles would be on display for the whole world to see. — Kareena Kapoor Khan

My cartoon life is in my office, and it's very separate and getting very in my own head. My television life is I'm begging one of the actors to say the line in the way I'd like them to. — Bruce Eric Kaplan

The great thing about the animation process is that is goes from, I write the lines, it goes to the actors, the actors bring a whole world to that, they bring the characters to life, then it goes to the animators, then it goes to the editor who cuts it together, and then you screen it and it goes back through the system again. — Michael Arndt

I don't differentiate between black and Latino actors. We're in the same struggle to be represented in a way that's even close to honest. And I can tell you that the amount of Latino characters I can point at and say, 'That's what my life experience looks like' - I can't think of any off the top of my head besides Jimmy Smits in 'Mi Familia.' — Lin-Manuel Miranda

We follow our scripts like actors in a very large, very long production. And even with no audience, none of us gives a hint that it isn't real. — Ann Brashares

Once, and only once, I walked on stage and my mind went utterly blank! I had no idea why I was there! My fellow actors had to rescue me. I was very young and new to the business, so I'm glad it didn't give me stage fright for the rest of my life! — Laura Donnelly

One of the things I really love about TV is this symbiotic relationship you can get between the writers and the actors, and the characters start to come to life because you start to collaborate. — Carla Gugino

These are the three things - volume of sound, modulation of pitch, and rhythm - that a speaker bears in mind. It is those who do bear them in mind who usually win prizes in the dramatic contests; and just as in drama the actors now count for more than the poets, so it is in the contests of public life, owing to the defects of our political institutions. — Aristotle.

But what I've also really liked about it is that it not only has Marvel set about ... if they just were slavishly trying to bring the comic books to life, literally, I don't the movies would work, because it's different to see something on screen in three dimensions with actors, and they kind of, I believe, are constantly trying to find a way to absolutely respect the source material and at the same time, transform it into something that works and that you believe on screen. — Clark Gregg

Actors take risks all the time. We put ourselves on the line. It is creative to be able to interpret someone's words and breathe life into them. — Patty Duke

What I love in working on film is just working with actors. It's one thing to write scenes alone over a keyboard and to imagine the actions and reactions in your head, but it's a completely other thing to hear actors speaking your words, to see their bodies bringing the fullness of emotion, need, desire and pain to life right in front of you. It's amazing. — Dee Rees

Perhaps society should give actors the same sort of protection it gives to those who follow a religious life. Actor/priest was originally the same job. The theater is left wing magic and theology is right wing magic. — Jennifer Stone

Jimmy [Dean] was the most talented and original actor I ever saw work. He was also a guerrilla artist who attacked all restrictions on his sensibility. Once he pulled a switchblade and threatened to murder his director. I imitated his style in art and in life. It got me in a lot of trouble. — Dennis Hopper

You need as much ballast as possible to stop you from floating away; you need people around you, things going on, otherwise life is like some film where the money ran out, and there are no sets, or locations, or supporting actors, and it's just one bloke on his own staring into the camera with nothing to do and nobody to speak to, and who'd believe in this character then? — Nick Hornby

I wouldn't date an actress. There's only room for one actor in my life and I'm it. Too difficult. On the one hand, they understand the job. But on the other hand, it's very competitive within the relationship. Two actors, say one becomes a mega-star and the other doesn't. — Jonathan Rhys Meyers

The Earth Is My Stage And The Sun Is My Spotlight — Joshua Teya

I love the life of an actor because you spend brief amounts of time with other people and then you just leave. I need to be alone a lot, and I need the outdoors. — Madeleine Stowe

About actors' lives ... I'm not the person to ask. I don't live an actor's life and I really don't know. I probably read less about actors' lives than you all do. So, I'm in the dark about all of that, sorry. — Tilda Swinton

Over time as an actor, your life with a project can be so short lived because you come on, you do it, and then you're done. You have no control, no say, and all of a sudden there's all of this distance between the work you've put into something and the product as you see it appear on-screen. — Maggie Siff

I've been a sports fan all my life, and like most other actors, I'm convinced I could have been a pro athlete if Hollywood hadn't come calling. — Jamie Foxx

It seems extraordinary to have waited so long into one's life to have found the part that actually uses your basic rhythm. And I think that's always sort of what actors connect up with - their own sort of world. — Susan Sullivan

They were all employed full time as actors in a play they understood, that any human being anywhere could understand and applaud." "So life became a work of art," I marveled. — Kurt Vonnegut

Actors in any capacity, artists of any stripe, are inspired by their curiosity, by their desire to explore all quarters of life, in light and in dark, and reflect what they find in their work. Artists instinctively want to reflect humanity, their own and each other's, in all its intermittent virtue and vitality, frailty and fallibility. — Tom Hiddleston

I've always known actors because my parents are actors on stage and so I lived in a very creative environment when I was a kid. All my life. — Marion Cotillard

I started with the Target Company in 1993 when their Christmas theme that year was 'It's A Wonderful Life,' and they reunited the actors who played the Bailey kids. So we went all over and really had a blast getting the love from all of the fans and thought, 'Whoopty-doo, there's something going on here.' — Karolyn Grimes

A few moments after he found himself on the stage amid the garish gas and the dim scenery, acting before the innumerable faces of the void. It surprised him to see that the play which he had known at rehearsals for a disjointed lifeless thing had suddenly assumed a life of its own. It seemed now to play itself, he and his fellow actors aiding it with their parts. When the curtain fell on the last scene he heard the void filled with applause and, through a rift in a side scene, saw the simple body before which he had acted magically deformed, the void of faces breaking at all points and falling asunder into busy groups. — James Joyce

Obviously I like to make sure that my life is separate, so as me as a person, I know that my fans know me. But as an actor I like to do different things and I'm gonna want to try new things that may not necessarily have a positive meaning. — Selena Gomez

Their lives were full of quiet drama, full of vague yet thrilling signs that life was not as the common run supposed it to be; they were among those ... who watch life as though it were a great drab curtain which they are sure is always about to rise on some terrific and exquisite spectacle, and though it never did quite rise, they were patient, and noted excitedly every small movement of it as the actors took their places, strained to hear the unimaginable setting being shifted. — John Crowley

Life actors never rehearse and need no script. A life actor uses only what is available, nothing more, nothing less. — Abbie Hoffman

All of my favourite actors are American and I grew up watching American movies. It's weird I used to do a New Jersey accent in every audition in America, because I liked it. It's completely bizarre and everybody would ask: 'Where are you from?' And I would say: 'Oh, I'm from London!' — Robert Pattinson

There is a theory that watching unbearable stories about other people lost in grief and rage is good for you - may cleanse you of your darkness. Do you want to go down to the pits of yourself all alone? Not much. What if an actor could do it for you? Isn't that why they are called actors? They act for you. You sacrifice them to action. And this sacrifice is a mode of deepest intimacy of you with your own life. Within it you watch [yourself] act out the present or possible organization of your nature. You can be aware of your own awareness of this nature as you never are at the moment of experience. The actor, by reiterating you, sacrifices a moment of his own life in order to give you a story of yours. — Anne Carson

I could live without acting ... Acting is a gift I've received. And I'm grateful for it and I enjoy it. But it's not the main point of my life. It never was. — Jeanne Moreau

There are some great actors I don't want to meet because I don't want to know how they did it. I don't want to know anything about their personal life, and the illusion, or whatever it is, the shape-shiftery magic stuff that they do, which is my joy. — Rupert Friend

I've met a lot of actors who have three dreams: You dream of making a sci-fi, you dream of making a Western and you dream of making a vampire movie. So this is one of my life-dreams as an actor coming true. — Richard Sammel

Most actors don't know what they're going to do next, so you get into this thing where you have to force yourself to have another life outside of acting. And then, as soon as you start something in this sort of normal life that you're trying to live, you get a job. So you have this constant struggle because you want to be able to commit to things and to finish things in your life, but then you also want to be able to act. — Winona Ryder

As actors, we try to just do the character justice and try to make the writer's intentions come to life. If you do that to the best of your ability, that's really all you can do. All that other stuff, like a warm reception from fans and viewers, is just icing. — Tim Kang

Throughout the entire history of philosophy, philosophers have sought to discover what man is - or what human nature is. But Sartre believed that man has no such eternal nature to fall back on. It is therefore useless to search for the meaning of life in general. We are condemned to improvise. We are like actors dragged onto the stage without having learned our lines, with no script and no prompter to whisper stage directions to us. We must decide for ourselves how to live. — Jostein Gaarder

I learned early on to stay away from gossip magazines and reviews. That stuff just makes you unhappy, and I know actors that read everything that's written about them and they're miserable. You can choose what to let into your life. — John Travolta

I watch a lot of different films. A lot of different performances and I find a lot of little things from the films or things that actors do or people in real life who have behaviors or idiosyncrasies that I like or find interesting and I try to remember that. And then I'll do a prayer. I'll do a prayer to ask the character or the spirit of the character to come and visit me. And let's work together. — Wesley Snipes

If you're suddenly doing something you don't want to do for four years, just so you've got something to fall back on, by the time you come out you don't have that 16-year-old drive any more and you'll spend your life doing something you never wanted to do in the first place. — Ewan McGregor