Stage And Acting Quotes & Sayings

No acting, no production, could take the place of that moment when you come out in the dark on to the stage and the drummer plays four beats on the hi-hat and then lights and music. It just takes your breath away. No words can do what music can. — Ken Stott

The stage is a magic circle where only the most real things happen, a neutral territory outside the jurisdiction of Fate where stars may be crossed with impunity. A truer and more real place does not exist in all the universe. — P.S. Baber

Being on stage is a seductive lifestyle. My advice to aspiring actors is think twice. People sometimes go into acting for the wrong reasons - as a shortcut to fame and fortune. If these goals are not attained, they feel a bitter disappointment. — Chris Sarandon

All I have to do is be me on stage. But acting, I have to be someone else, and walk how they would walk and blink how they would blink. I used to talk about it bad like, 'Aw man, that person made $10 million a movie?' But now I understand why they do. I get it now. — Jill Scott

I grew up in Glen Ellyn, which is about 20 miles west of Chicago. I attended Glenbard South High School and University of Illinois. I didn't study acting until I moved to Los Angeles after college, but the fact that I was raised in the Chicago area set the stage for all of my comedic and acting sensibilities. — Ryan McPartlin

We are all acting on stage and the world is our audience. — Antonello Fiore

I can do everything with ease on the stage, whereas in real life I feel too big and clumsy. So I didn't choose acting. It chose me. — Ingrid Bergman

There's something about being any kind of entertainer that is acting. You have to put on a show. Things you wouldn't do in your life, you do on stage. You have to let go. And that's extra hard for rappers. We have a tendency to, quote unquote, keep it real. As an actor, you have to be able to humiliate yourself. Do whatever it takes. — Heavy D

I am coming to the end of acting. I have a list: another stage production, maybe one or two more movies, one more season of American Horror Story ... and then that is it for me. Because I think that's enough. I want to go out with a bang ... or should I say, a scare? — Jessica Lange

For me, the real goal is to integrate. The thing that I'm most happy with is the fact that I've been able to keep doing all of it - to keep writing, and to keep acting in movies, and to keep acting on the stage, to keep directing plays. I find that they feed each other, and that I learn about acting from directing and I learn about writing from acting. — Ethan Hawke

Yeah, I think that a play is a huge commitment, and I think that what it requires of you is a lot, so it really makes you dig in and find things, and it just makes you sharp, 'cause it's live. Really, to me, it separates the men from the boys. I always say it's like the frontlines of acting, when you're on stage. — Yul Vazquez

I was applying to the art school, but there was a checklist that said I had to do either production design or stage management or acting. I thought, "I don't want to be an actor, but I know production and stage management take acting classes" - this is literally my internal monologue. I was like, "Designers don't have to take acting classes. Cool. I'll check that box." — James Pearse Connelly

If I do a film and have to get naked, that tends to dictate how often I go to the gym. Acting in 'Richard II' on stage was a huge physical workout, so I ended up more toned than I normally am. — Eddie Redmayne

Acting is not as difficult as you may think. People are born natural actors
and play many parts on the stage of life. Everyone is constantly in front of an
audience - or performing monologues when alone. — Bryan Michael Stoller

I would be an actress for the rest of my life just because it's really relaxing. Writing is hard work, and stand-up is so stressful before you get on stage, but acting is a complete ensemble experience. — Kristen Schaal

An acting assistant stage manager in a theater in Canterbury, a rep theater. A small wage but just enough to get by on, and I made props and I walked on, and I changed scenery, and I realized that I just loved it. — Jeremy Irons

Acting up, a peculiar phrase. It's what people say to minimize the gravity of their condition. It implies that the offending part (heart, stomach, liver, whatever) is a fractious, bratty child, which can be brought into line with a slap or a sharp word. At the same time, that these symptoms
these tremors and pains, these palpitations
are mere theatrics, and that the organ in question will soon stop capering about and making a spectacle of itself, and resume its placid, off-stage existence. — Margaret Atwood

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

Naturally, she had enemies. Her success, her sex, her racial origin and her bohemian extravagance reminded the puritanical why actors used to be buried in unhallowed ground. And over the decades her acting style, once so original, inevitably dated, since naturalness onstage is just as much an artifice as naturalism in the novel. If the magic always worked for some - Ellen Terry called her "transparent as an azalea" and compared her stage presence to "smoke from a burning paper" - others were less kind. Turgenev, though a Francophile and himself a dramatist, found her "false, cold, affected," and condemned her "repulsive Parisian chic. — Julian Barnes

I loved being on stage, but I told myself that if I didn't get into RADA, I wouldn't pursue an acting career. I did get in, though, and that was that. — Oona Chaplin

Our Nation, a great stage for the acting out of great thoughts, presents the classic confrontation between Locke's views of the state of nature and Rousseau's criticism of them ... Nature is raw material, worthless without the mixture of human labor; yet nature is also the highest and most sacred thing. The same people who struggle to save the snail-darter bless the pill, worry about hunting deer and defend abortion. Reverence for nature, mastery of nature- whichever is convenient. — Allan Bloom

With acting, you do want to get every job, and you're trying to get every audition, but then you reach a certain stage where you start to kind of gravitate toward the stories and the people that have a similar heartbeat. — Jason Clarke

Never lose yourself on the stage. Always act in your own person, as an artist. The moment you lose yourself on the stage marks the departure from truly living your part and the beginning of exaggerated false acting. Therefore, no matter how much you act, how many parts you take, you should never allow yourself any exception to the rule of using your own feelings. To break that rule is the equivalent of killing the person you are portraying, because you deprive him of a palpitating, living, human soul, which is the real source of life for a part. — Constantin Stanislavski

Character actor' is a technical term denoting a clever stage performer who cannot act, and therefore makes an elaborate study of the disguises and stage tricks by which acting can be grotesquely simulated. — George Bernard Shaw

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

When I stand on stage, I get nervous, and because unexpected situations can occur, we need even more preparation. I must have confidence on top of that as well. The reason why I chose drama/theatre as my major is to act after learning all the theory first. You only live once, and I can only live as myself. I think I could learn a lot of things if I can live as others through acting. — Seohyun

Having been brought up in a serf-owner's family, I entered active life, like all young men of my time, with a great deal of confidence in the necessity of commanding, ordering, scolding, punishing, and the like. But when, at an early stage, I had to manage serious enterprises ... I began to appreciate the difference between acting on the principle of command and discipline, and acting on the principle of common understanding ... Men of initiative are required everywhere; but once the impulse has been given, the enterprise must be conducted, ... not in military fashion, but in a sort of communal way. — Pyotr Kropotkin

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

You learn a lot about acting and being physical and being on stage, but there is technical stuff on camera that you can't learn until you do it. — Finn Wittrock

Art, especially the stage, is an area where it is impossible to walk without stumbling. There are in store for you many unsuccessful days and whole unsuccessful seasons: there will be great misunderstandings and deep disappointments ... you must be prepared for all this, expect it and nevertheless, stubbornly, fanatically follow your own way. — Anton Chekhov

For me, comedy is constantly presented as this fake casualness, like a guy just walked on stage going, 'This crazy thing happened to me the other day.' And he's in front of 3000 people, and he's acting like an everyman, and he's getting paid so much money. — Bo Burnham

I think I always knew I was going to somehow be on a stage. I was quite an extrovert, as a child. And I did a lot of music, when I was younger, so I thought I was going to go into music, but I fell into acting, in a really weird way. — Eve Hewson

In musical performances one can sense that the person on stage is having a good time even if they're singing a song about breaking up or being in a bad way. For an actor this would be anathema, it would destroy the illusion, but with singing one can have it both ways. As a singer, you can be transparent and reveal yourself on stage, in that moment, and at the same time be the person whose story is being told in the song. Not too many kinds of performance allow that. — David Byrne

Where I teach students in drama school, there's a course called Dramatics. In this course, all students must put on a play. However, acting majors are not supposed to act. They can write the play, for example, and the writers may work on stage art. Likewise, stage art majors may become actors, and in this way you put on a show. — Kim Young-ha

The inner life of the [imagination], and not the personal and tiny experiential resources of the actor, should be elaborated on the stage and shown to the audience. This life is rich and revealing for the audience as well as for the actor himself. — Michael Chekhov

The acting that one sees upon the stage does not show how human beings comport themselves in crises, but how actors think they ought to. It is thus, like poetry and religion, a device for gladdening the heart with what is palpably not true. — H.L. Mencken

I have been taking classes and I'm familiar with stage, but I'm not as familiar with acting on camera. — Kevin Richardson

People talk about the difference between radio acting, TV acting and stage acting, but I think it's all the same. For instance, when I played Vultan in 'Flash Gordon,' I put as much energy into it as I would with 'King Lear' - it's all part of the same thing. — Brian Blessed

How do we pick and choose where to get involved? Canada and other peacekeeping nations have become accustomed to acting if, and only if, international public opinion will support them - a dangerous path that leads to a moral relativism in which a country risks losing sight of the difference between good and evil, a concept that some players on the international stage view as outmoded. Some governments regard the use of force itself as the greatest evil. Others define "good" as the pursuit of human rights and will opt to employ force when human rights are violated. As the nineties drew to a close and the new millennium dawned with no sign of an end to these ugly little wars, it was as if each troubling conflict we were faced with had to pass the test of whether we could "care" about it or "identify" with the victims before we'd get involved. — Romeo Dallaire

One of the things I do tell young women, if they want to pursue a career in acting, is to get good stage training. It is essential to have a good basis in stage technique. You can move into film easily, and acquire more skill and more understanding, but you can't necessarily go the other way around. For women, longevity of career will very much be on stage. — Kathleen Turner

Shy, insecure, afraid to speak up? "Act as if," they say. Act as if you're not. Stand tall when you walk. Project your voice when you talk. Raise your hand in class. Act as if. Speak your mind. Cut your hair. Be the part. Look the part. You can do this. Just act as if. If you really knew me, If you could see inside, You'd find shy and insecure and afraid. Acting as if. Ironic, isn't it? The only time I'm not Acting "as if"? When I'm on a stage. — Tamara Ireland Stone

I've never been a really big fan of theatre. I don't know why. It's so much for effort. It's much more difficult for me than stage acting just because of the pressure that's piled on you and you have to learn the entire performance by heart. — Callan McAuliffe

Acting is something I did when I was a kid. I do act sometimes in friends' projects, but when I do, it's just for fun. It is actually a hobby for me now. I do still love stage acting, but the day-to-day process of being an actor is so exhausting and so taxing. — Mara Wilson

I came from the stage so it was a different kind of acting, or a different arena of acting, and I just loved to do it as a kid. It's really gratifying to get to create these different characters and to get to create different voices and to get to wear different clothes. — Freddy Rodriguez

There's something about being in a house with an audience, and having that immediate feedback. I started acting because of that energy; it's what feeds me on stage and informs my choices. — Daniel Dae Kim

I dropped out in middle school. I dropped out in, towards the beginning of the ninth grade. And then I started studying -I started taking acting classes at a, well first I was like in a community theater at that time in Torrance, California, so I finished up like my season with that community theater just acting in, you know, acting in a small part on this play or a big part on that play or a stage manager or assistant stage manager in another play. — Quentin Tarantino

When you use single character viewpoint, you tell the main character's story - and only his or her story. Every single thing in the plot - whether it's an event, problem, emotion, or consequence - should be revealed through that main character's eyes. Your main character needs to be on center stage throughout the entire story, acting and reacting to what is happening in the plot. To do that effectively, reveal only your main character's emotions and thoughts. Tell your reader only what your main character is feeling, not the feelings of other characters. — Tracey E. Dils

I was mainly a stage actor. I found film acting mechanical, because it was so technical - there was so much technique with the lamps and the movements of the camera. — Erland Josephson

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

Stage acting is a very difficult thing - and I've learned a lot and have a long way to go. — Ralph Strangis

My basic profession is as an actor, and I have learnt much about life through working as an actor. Working as an actor is really a spiritual profession, since it means to create life on the stage. It means to play a role totally, while at the same time you know deep down inside yourself that you are not the role that you are playing. Working as an actor gave me early a spiritual discipline, which taught me a lot about awareness and meditation. Life is also about learning to play different roles, and learning to change between different roles with the same easiness that you change shirt. — Swami Dhyan Giten

My experience of singing, as an actor, was that there's a different creative feeling of freedom. The acting thing is a bit more defined and cerebral. I can see why people would want to cross over. If you have so much freedom on stage then perhaps you want to be confined a bit, and vice versa. — Orlando Bloom

The actor's physical type isn't and shouldn't be the main consideration. Does the actor look the part? It is the simplest question to deal with. The director deludes himself who yields to the temptation to believe that an affirmative answer settles the matter. An actor's looks will impress an audience initially, but after his first five minutes on stage it becomes aware of what he or she communicates (or fails to communicate) through acting! — Harold Clurman

What I've found is that stage is very much a foundation of acting. It's where it all began and you're working with that repetition. — Matthew Lewis

I went to college and stage school, and thought about acting, but ... I just don't like actors very much! They're not as fun as musicians. — Martha Wainwright

I ain't acting when I'm on stage. That's why all the little love bugs who'll come and see me at Lovebox love me. They know it's the real me. — Lil' Kim

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

Acting, to me, is being given the freedom and ability to play, and that's - that's what I love most about it. I feel very comfortable in playing, whether it be in front of a camera or on stage. — David Wenham

I think I know where my life went wrong. For all the world's a stage and I'm a lousy actor! — Greg Curtis

When I connect to my soul, project it into another # character , and then bring it to the stage or to a film
that has always been for me the great joy of # acting . It's been as if my soul kind of leaps out of my body and is able to be free and dance around. — Kyra Sedgwick

As a stand up, and often in acting, there is no place for the most intense feelings. Rage, genuine sorrow, naked hope ... These things don't fit on a comedy stage and if you act you'll get to express them once in a while. Music is a place for the intensely personal. — Hal Sparks

I love theater work because of the immediate effect your performance has on the audience. And I love the repetition; I love getting on the same stage for more than a month and reciting the same lines, trying to make a small or large step towards an improvement in my acting. — Alfred Molina

In England, when we're at drama school, we spend a lot of time learning the craft from playwrights and stage actors, who are very well trained in the basics of acting because they need to get it right the first time - you can't have second or third takes when you're in front of a live audience, unlike in film. — Sam Claflin

I was convinced that acting was for fools. I was on the stage when I was eight with my father, he was playing one of those Greek blind guys that sees things and warns people, whilst I was in a blue skirt. I think there were 5,000 people in the theatre, it was ridiculous. — Rutger Hauer

Inside" Children
Inside each of us are the children we were at each developmental stage.
With regard to our creative dreams, these inside children can prevent us from living them by "acting out" in order to try to get our attention. Your inner 5-year-old is not going to patiently wait as you learn intricate metalworking techniques or study impressionist painting. Yet, your inner 10-year-old may be perfectly suited to learn and observe new skills.
What's really needed is parenting of these inside children so that we bring them to age-appropriate activities. — SARK

When most dullards hear the words 'the theater,' they envision a twelve-screen multiplex where disaster porn entertains the culturally witless for 90 minutes at a time. Pfaugh. The word 'theater' has grandeur. Power. Back to its ancient Grecian origins, it means 'the seeing place.' A stage upon which actors and actresses use fiction to show us truths. — Mark Waid

There's no truth in acting, it's all a trick, because you go on stage in front of sets, you're on film - it's all a trick. I'm making it sound very - I really am demystifying it, but what I try to do, what I do, and I hope effectively, is to create a reality as if it is happening now, that you're fishing for words out of the air. — Anthony Hopkins

On some level, acting is the art of pretend, and you have to have a highly cultivated sense of imagination. You have to be able to see things that aren't there, no matter what aspect of acting, whether it's green screen, whether it's on stage, whether it's anything else, whether you're working on the radio. — Stephen Lang

I think the motion picture industry is a stupid business and I despise acting the scenes in short snatches, one at a time. I hate this film work. I am disgusted with myself. On the stage I could never play a part unless I felt it with all my heart and soul. — Conrad Veidt

I did theatre when I was nine, I think. Nine and ten, and that was just the beginning of my whole involvement in acting, my whole interest. I don't really remember it that well. But it was really fun. I mean, it was exciting just to be on stage in front of an audience. It gives you a different kind of rush. — Amanda Seyfried

I've had a great deal of experience with adolescents over the centuries, and I've discovered that as a group these awkward half children take themselves far too seriously. Moreover, appearance is everything for the adolescent. I suppose it's a form of play-acting. The adolescent knows that the child is lurking under the surface, but he'd sooner die than let it out, and I was no different. I was so intent on being "grown-up" that I simply couldn't relax and enjoy life.
Most people go through this stage and outgrow it. Many, however, do not. The pose becomes more important than reality, and these poor creatures become hollow people, forever striving to fit themselves into an impossible mold. — David Eddings

There's nothing more fun than acting on stage with a live audience and that immediate feedback. — Mary McCormack

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

Acting is ephemeral. You can't hang it on a wall. You can't throw it off. And you can't bring it out of a closet. It's there one night and it's gone the next, at least with stage acting anyhow. — Charles Durning

I attend film school, my background is acting and directing. But the acting does best, I like to work on the stage. — Tommy Wiseau

I'm trying to think how I impressed my wife. We had an on-stage kiss, and I really went for it. Because I liked her. Usually you can get away with it being just technical, but it was a problem when I ended up kissing my wife on the set. I'd say I stopped acting and kissed her on set. — David Walton

Coming from sitcom television and coming from music you burn up every single second. You don't leave anything there. You burn it up and you pass out when you walk off stage, so I took that concept into acting. — Will Smith

It's about that applause I want to speak to you. I want you to remember that when you've done a little dance or a song or sketch, the applause which you get is not only because you yourself have done your best, but because each of those men is seeing in you someone he loves at home, and because of you is able to forget for a little while the unhappiness of not being in his home, and in some cases the great tragedy of not knowing what has happened to the children in his family. — Noel Streatfeild

Out of perverseness, I jumped on the subway and went down to a sound stage on Fourth Street to watch the shooting of Kay Doubleday's big strip scene in Mad Dog Coll, a gangster film that can still, to my embarrassment, be seen occasionally on late-night TV... Kay Doubleday was in my class at Lee Strasberg's; it was in the interest of art, I told myself, to watch her prance down a ramp, singing and stripping her heart out. — Brooke Hayward

I learned acting by doing it. And although I had never taken an acting class, it didn't take long to learn how to be on the stage. All you have to do is to be humiliated in front of an audience a few times. If you don't like being humiliated publicly, you learn how to act. — Ron Vawter

There's a very fine line between underacting and not acting at all. And not acting is what a lot of actors are guilty of. It amazes me how some of these little numbers with dreamy looks and a dead pan are getting away wit it. I'd hate to see them on stage with a dog act. — Joan Blondell

Ladies and babies, and mortgages, for that matter, can all wait. Acting has done a strange thing to me, though. I often sit there, thinking, 'I love this, but I wouldn't put my daughter on the stage.' — Eddie Redmayne

Acting on the stage is a luxury for me. I lose money. I make movies for financial reasons and this allows me the luxury of acting on Broadway. Hollywood, unfortunately, exploits actors for their own reasons, which are usually financial. So we might as well exploit Hollywood as much as it exploits us. — George C. Scott

I would rather do a play because it's instantaneous. You go on the stage, and you know whether it's happening or not. Somebody asked me 'What is acting?' And I said, 'Acting is listening.' And if you ain't listening, nobody's listening. — Charles Durning

It's a career that's enticing because you go on stage, for example, and people clap. You get that affirmation, but you can't go into acting for that because it's really your own self-belief that's going to get you through. — Miranda Otto

We can see the film stars of yesterday in yesterday's films, hear the voices of poest and singers on a record, keep the plays of dead dramatists upon our bookshelves, but the actor who holds his audience captive for one brief moment upon a lighted stage vanishes forever when the curtain falls. — Daphne Du Maurier

My first love is acting on stage. A sitcom is a hybrid of stage and film. — Judd Nelson

On certain social occasions, otherwise dignified and serious men will begin behaving unconsciously like players on a stage, performing as they talk, acting as they gesticulate. The cause is invariably a woman. — Jed Rubenfeld

Acting for screen is very different from acting on stage, and then obviously when you dance ... everything is a physical embodiment. But the discipline is the same approach. You have to take both things seriously; nothing well-crafted is by mistake. — Amanda Schull

My metaphor for acting in movies - not on stage because it's completely different on stage - is to put colors on an easel for the director to paint his own painting with in the editing room, long after I've left. You buy me for red and black, so I better give you really great red and black, but if I can give you purple, pink, green and brown too, I will. — Scott Glenn

My professional acting life, stage and screen, has brought me public support, emotional fulfillment and material comfort. It has brought me together with fine people, good companions with whom I've shared the inevitable lot of all actors: flops and hits. — Peter O'Toole

'Ice Age' felt like stage acting. You'd write a sequence, and sometimes you'd submit pages, but other times, I would actually perform it for the directors and producer in my office. — Jason Fuchs

Acting is a sport. On stage you must be ready to move like a tennis player on his toes. Your concentration must be keen, your reflexes sharp; your body and mind are in top gear, the chase is on. Acting is energy. In the theatre people pay to see energy. — Clive Swift

You can be in an acting class all you want, but you don't fully learn until you get off that stage and in front of a camera. — Nicholas Lea

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

Acting on stage is a living organism you can never pin down, and I believe the audience feeds off that, too. — Hattie Morahan

Before I even knew what that half of my family did, I was interested in performing. I remember being seven years old and up on a stage and loving it. I've always adored it. Not just acting, but the whole process of writing and directing movies, everything that has to do with that part of life. Maybe it's in my blood. — Jack Huston

My theory is that everything an actor does, from the way he looks at his watch to the way he moves across the stage, is in the service of advancing a story, and in that sense, it's all writing. In that sense we, while acting, write. — Bernard Sahlins

I've been very blessed, I think, or what do you call it ... mmm ... lucky to get at this stage what I have. It's not like I've come from acting school and done work at an academy or something. I feel I've been given a very huge chance and opportunity. — Katrina Kaif

MOST PEOPLE think acting is make-believe. Like it's a big game where people put on costumes and feign kisses or stab wounds and then pretend to gasp and die. They think it's a show. They don't understand that acting is becoming someone else, changing your thoughts and needs until you don't remember your own anymore. You let the other person invade everything you are and then you turn yourself inside out, spilling their identity onto the stage like a kind of bloodletting. — Mindy Mejia