A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.
A lot of what acting is paying attention.
A man who strains himself on the stage is bound, if he is any good, to strain all the people sitting in the stalls.
A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar — you pretend it's not there.
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.
Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic art is in no sense cathartic; it is merely a form of emotional masturbation. It is the rarest thing to find a player who has not had his character affected for the worse by the practice of his profession. Nobody can make a habit of self-exhibition, nobody can exploit his personality for the sake of exercising a kind of hypnotic power over others, and remain untouched by the process.
Acting deals with very delicate emotions. It is not putting up a mask. Each time an actor acts he does not hide; he exposes himself.
Acting doesn't bring anything to a text. On the contrary, it detracts from it.
Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.
Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.
Acting is happy agony.
Acting is not about dressing up. Acting is about stripping bare. The whole essence of learning lines is to forget them so you can make them sound like you thought of them that instant.
Acting is not being emotional, but being able to express emotion.
Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.
Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life. The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis.
Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.
Acting on a good idea is better than just having a good idea.
Acting provides the fulfillment of never being fulfilled. You're never as good as you'd like to be. So there's always something to hope for.
Actors are loved because they are unoriginal. Actors stick to their script. The unoriginal man is loved by the mediocrity because this kind of ''artistic'' expression is something to which the merest five-eighth can climb.
Actors are one family over the entire world.