Actors Wisdom Quotes

“All the screen cowboys behaved like real gentlemen. They didn't drink, they didn't smoke. When they knocked the bad guy down, they always stood with their fists up, waiting for the heavy to get back on his feet. I decided I was going to drag the bad guy to his feet and keep hitting him.”
― John Wayne

“Remember that the expressions and vocal patterns you are committing to film will become synecdoches... That means something little that stands in for something big. Your smile will stand in for all human happiness. Your tears will be a model for everyone else's sadness.
...You have a responsibility to the people who will repeat your lines, wink your winks, imitate your laughter without knowing they are imitating anything. This is the secret power that actors hold. It is almost like being a god. We create what it is to be human when we stand fifty feet tall on a silk screen.
So you'd better be good at it, for God's sake.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Radiance

“When you most succeed, you do so by seeming not to act at all.”
― Stella Adler, The Art of Acting

“All the world's a stage, and most of us are desperately under-rehearsed.”
― Sean O'Casey

“Don't wear green in your dressing room,' suggested Miss Spink.
'Or mention the Scottish play," added Miss Forcible.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“I'm like a circus standing on two legs.”
― Nuno Roque

“In all of time, all of space, there will only be one you. How can you be anything but perfect? As you are. Mad, sad, glad. You are amazing.”
― Cindy Marcus, The Ultimate Young Actor's Guide - Getting the Role and Making it Shine

“Actors are rotten, not parts.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Theatre

“In essence we are pure desire. That desire is an expression of a moment and that moment becomes a series of moments we call life.

Suspended on the hands of an evanescent ticking. Pending on the beat of a vein woven drum. Fragile and fleeting. Ever mysterious and expanding.

My outer life was full. My inner life was like rampant Boston ivy and aspects of my soul were more akin to cities than archetypes.

Deluged with words and pulses, in poetry I am but the result of all those who came before me. I represent more than I am able to comprehend.

My expression is the result of all those who slain me and all those who heal me. Thank you differently and the same, for the hues of my emotional palette only deepened and multiplied like the cells of some thousand galaxies.

Pent, it was time for my expression to vent.”
― Nicole Bonomi

“They tell us not to follow the stars and that it is blasphemous but the same people tell us the story of Three Wise Men that found the Son of Suns by following the same stars.

We should learn that following those tiny lights that protest total darkness and smile at the moon no matter her mood, is the route to sunrise. Those lights are the seedlings of your own faith in tomorrow...

(Screenplay)”
― Nicole Bonomi

“You don't always keep on the top", she began again. "My life, my career has been like a roller coaster. I've either been an enormous success or just a down-and-out failure, which is silly because everybody always asks me, 'How does it feel to make a comeback?' And I don't know where I've been! I haven't been away." She paused, and Vangkilde waited. "It's lonely and cold on the top...lonely and cold," she said very quietly.”
― Anne Edwards, Judy Garland

“One thing he'd learned in ten years on the New York Stage was this: don't make friends with the man who plays Hamlet; make friends with the man who pays Hamlet.”
― Thomas Dyja, Play For A Kingdom: A Brilliantly Imagined Civil War Novel – Enemies Find Brotherhood Through Baseball

“The craft of acting dismantles the realms of private personal space and shows human nature for what it truly is; simple and fragile”
― Val Uchendu

“An artist who works from impulse creates pathways for his body and emotion; the lines will naturally ride on waves of his or her emotion or sometimes get drowned in it”
― Val Uchendu

“The Actor's Prayer

Great Baachus, spare us from the demon Rejection! And harsh critics, incompetent make-up artists, ill-fitting costumes, tight shoes, screaming children, corpsing and a visit from the welfare officer.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Youre mind is powerful. Use it wisely.”
― Samuel Kelly IV

“Stage footlights have sent many tumbling, the prepared and unprepared, to suckle at the bosom of Madame Obscurité.”
― Stewart Stafford

“With the stakes as high as they are, I can no longer separate my professional voice with my activism. Our voices are desperately needed to create change.”
― Eileen Anglin

“I always notice the people with generous hearts. Those who are kind and support people who can't do anything for their career.”
― Eileen Anglin

“I always notice the generous people in this business. Those who are kind and supportive of people who can't do anything for their career.”
― Eileen Anglin

“Being yourself is the simplest role of an actor”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov

“Always remember people with limitations will attempt to put their limitations on you.

People who operate on a positive, encouraging, inclusive level within their own life will never tell you that you are not good enough.”
― Eileen Anglin

“Every win I have is a win for those of us who did - and do not - sit at the cool kids lunch table.

Who have spent their lives as the lone wolf circling the fire, hoping to feel it's warmth.

This one's for you.”
― Eileen Anglin