Theatre Acting Quotes

I love the stage, I love the process of acting in theatre, but unfortunately, it doesn't pay the bills. ~ Kabir Bedi

I just enjoy acting, whatever area - theatre, film, television. ~ Michelle Dockery

Acting's entertainment. It's not brain surgery. ~ Anthony Hopkins

The theatre-acting, creating, interpreting - means total involvement, the totality of heart, mind and spirit. ~ Stella Adler

I didn't want to get into acting just to play bystanders. I feel a bystander enough in my own life. And I do think that theatre can contribute to a certain analysis and commentary on our own world. ~ Elliot Cowan

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. ~ Constantin Stanislavski

Unless the theatre can ennoble you, make you a better person, you should flee from it. ~ Constantin Stanislavski

Acting is not being emotional, but being able to express emotion. ~ Kate Reid

Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that's printed about him. ~ Orson Welles

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being. ~ Thornton Wilder

I did a play called Throne of Straw when I was 11, at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles. It became really clear to me at that point that I enjoyed acting more than any other experience I was having. ~ Kiefer Sutherland

I've learnt that there's acting for film, acting for theatre, and acting for an audition. ~ Sarah Snook

Acting is not a state of being ... but a state of appearing to be. You can't be eight times a week without going stark staring mad. You've got to be in control. ~ Noel Coward

I think, by and large, the level of acting is mediocre. When I go to the theatre, I get so angry. I don't go. ~ Uta Hagen

Acting is standing up naked and turning around very slowly. ~ Rosalind Russell

I love theatre because it's just me and the audience. It's the litmus test in acting, to be able to sustain a performance over one, two or three hours. ~ Helen McCrory

Acting in theatre or television or screen is only for the irrecoverably diseased, those so smitten with the need that there is no choice. ~ Michael Shurtleff

I never achieved my first goal in the National Actors Theatre, which is to have a permanent Acting Company. ~ Tony Randall

I never had any acting heroes. I never really went to the theatre. ~ Julie Walters

The great difference between screen acting and theatre acting is that screen acting is about reacting - 75% of the time, great screen actors are great reactors. ~ Nicolas Roeg

Create your own method. Don't depend slavishly on mine. Make up something that will work for you! But keep breaking traditions, I beg you. ~ Constantin Stanislavski

Like the Bible, Stanislavsky's basic texts on acting can be quoted to any purpose. ~ Lee Strasberg

Honestly, I really don't like acting. I don't enjoy it. What I do like is going to a movie theatre and seeing my face on a poster. I like seeing my name on a poster. That is cool. ~ Gabriel Iglesias

Acting is not about being someone different. It's finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there. ~ Meryl Streep

Suit the action to the word, the
Word to the action. ~ William Shakespeare

From there I did a one year theatre acting course in Fife, and then three years of drama school in London. ~ Ewan McGregor

I hold theatre acting in such high esteem that it scares me. ~ Kate Bosworth

At the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre, Sanford Meisner said, 'When you go into the professional world, at a stock theatre somewhere, backstage, you will meet an older actor, someone who has been around awhile. He will tell you tales and anecdotes, about life in the theatre. He will speak to you about your performance and the performances of others, and he will generalize to you, based on his experience and his intuitions, about the laws of the stage. Ignore this man!' ~ David Mamet

For my first acting job I played the role of Ensign Pulver in 'Mr. Roberts' at the Manitoba Theatre Centre. ~ Len Cariou

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? ~ William Shakespeare

Theatre, in which actors take on changing roles, has among its many functions the examination of identity. For the individual, theatre is a kind of identity laboratory in which social roles can be examined vicariously. ~ Richard Hornby

I was very interested in theatre, mostly in stage design. I did a little bit of acting. ~ Jim Henson

Though I acted in hundreds of productions, appeared at the Guthrie Theatre and on Broadway in Amadeus, I discovered in my thirties that I didn't really like stage acting. The presence of the audience, the eight shows a week and the possibility of a long run were all unnatural to me. ~ Fred Melamed

Acting is a trick word invented in the festival of Dionysus, before Christ, in Greece at a fertility festival. That's where theatre came from: a fertility festival. No women were allowed. All the men played all the parts. ~ Gary Busey

All I asked was that I be spared surprises, although, in this world of six billion souls, all acting with free will and too many with audacity, surprises are inevitable, too few of them are the kind that make you smile and that lift your heart. ~ Dean Koontz

I got into acting my junior year of high school. We got a new hot drama teacher and I was like 'Alright, I'll try drama.' ~ Miles Teller

I find acting in contact lenses is bizarre to me, because there's just a giant filter between you and the world. I know it sounds painfully, ridiculously obvious, but it's true. You're just so detached. ~ Matthew Rhys

On the last day of our five-day work week, we did two performances and we had an audience. It was similar to theatre; we went from beginning to end, and it was very pleasing. ~ Jean Stapleton

A wonderful acting teacher I love, Josh Pais, has a system I love for being in the moment in acting, but also in life. And one of the things he reminds me of is to take a moment and just be here now. ~ Alysia Reiner

They are very good reasons why voice acting in games can be so terrible. Writers are in a great position to be able to bridge this gap. ~ Rhianna Pratchett

The hardest part of acting is not being guaranteed work. Every job could be your last. ~ Henry Cavill

C'mon, man!" B exclaimed. "It's one thing to be gay, but pinky swearing is for chicks!" "You do it, too," Ivy said, stepping through the doorway. "So don't be acting like you don't." "Burned," Rome sang. "Aww, baby, why you gotta do me like that? ~ Cambria Hebert

There are more things to worry about in the world than a messed-up audition. It's out of your hands. So often, it's not down to acting abilities but something an actor has no control over. So go in, be prepared, do your job, and go and enjoy the rest of your day. ~ Gregg Sulkin

I've never felt terribly attached to acting because I always feel like the world is really big and really interesting, and there are a lot of places that I can put my energy and be fulfilled. ~ Carrie Coon

A brick could be an object to measure your life against. Are you square, rigid, and inflexible? If yes, are you in the military? If no, why are you acting like a brick? ~ Jarod Kintz

I originally envisioned myself doing something with the suffix 'ology' at the end of it, like marine biology or entomology. But after I started to do some acting gigs, I thought it wasn't a bad thing ... I said to myself, 'I might as well keep riding this bus until the wheels fall off.' ~ Callan McAuliffe

I spent the first few months of graduate school pretending to be a student of theoretical physics. This required no great acting skill beyond the effort to appear unperturbed in the face of the inexplicable, which is as far as I can see one of the central tasks of adulthood. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

The biggest problem I have doing my acting is having to interact with other people. I think if it wasn't for my wife and my kids, I'd probably be a hermit. ~ John Gordon Sinclair

Well, a deficit reflects an imbalance between spending and revenue, and so narrowing it requires acting on one, the other or both. ~ Peter Orszag

When I was 14, I saw 'Waiting for Godot.' It's one of those plays that if it's done badly is absolutely dire and can put you off acting for life. But I was laughing all the way through it. ~ Kit Harington

I was the first African-American woman to play Maggie in 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.' It was at the Virginia State Theatre, and we turned Richmond upside down. ~ Tamara Tunie

I never thought acting would be my life. I only started doing it because I needed something to occupy my weekends after I dislocated my knee and couldn't play sport. ~ Callan McAuliffe

But forgiveness is the act of not putting anyone out of your heart, even those who are acting out of deep ignorance or out of confusion and pain. ~ Jack Kornfield

I was probably 34 when I got my first on-camera acting job, and it was through a friend of mine, who was working as a writer on the show, and I've never been more frightened in my life. ~ Kurt Fuller

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 still really love acting. I find it really challenging. And I really love film; it's a lot of fun. ~ Steve Zahn

the theater is one of the few places left in the bright and noisy world where we sit in the quiet dark together, to be awake."

Ruhl, Sarah. 100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write: On Umbrellas and Sword Fights, Parades and Dogs, Fire Alarms, Children, and Theater (p. 103). Faber & Faber. Kindle Edition. ~ Sarah Ruhl

I think there's that weird bastardization where musical theatre actors are treated as almost like vaudevillians or circus performers - that we're somehow not good actors because we sing and dance. ~ Laura Benanti

The people may be made to follow a path of action but they may not be made to understand it. ~ Confucius

I was acting my way through the whole thing. ~ Jeremy London

Our conceptions of morality, as all our other ideas, pass through a course of development; the difficulty comes in adjusting our conduct, which has become hardened into customs and habits, to these changing moral conceptions. When this adjustment is not made, we suffer from the strain and indecision of believing one hypothesis and acting upon another. ~ Jane Addams

Greatness is always built on this foundation: the ability to appear, speak and act, as the most common man. ~ Hafez

No; the charm is worked by common sense, and the spell can only be broke by your acting stupidly. ~ Thomas Hardy

I have enjoyed acting very much, because I know it's not for real! ~ Gloria Stuart

I started acting before that when I was about 13 or 14. ~ Stephen Dorff

Inner calm is critical to persuasive acting. ~ Dan Brown

What made me fall in love with acting, which is my life, was watching other people perform. It made me hunger to do that. ~ Elisabeth Rohm

If I die tomorrow, I've done the two hardest things anybody can do in this life with the least amount of security - music and acting - and I've had success in both. I can't really complain. I try not to live my life that way. ~ Yul Vazquez

To be a character who feels a deep emotion, one must go into the memory's vault and mix in a sad memory from one's own life. ~ Albert Finney

If you cast wrong, you are in a lot of trouble. ~ Paul Mazursky

The less you associate with some people, the more your life will improve.
Any time you tolerate mediocrity in others, it increases your mediocrity. An
important attribute in successful people is their impatience with negative
thinking and negative acting people. As you grow, your associates will
change. Some of your friends will not want you to go on. They will want you
to stay where they are. Friends that don't help you climb will want you to
crawl. Your friends will stretch your vision or choke your dream. Those that
don't increase you will eventually decrease you.

Consider this:
Never receive counsel from unproductive people. Never discuss your problems
with someone incapable of contributing to the solution, because those who
never succeed themselves are always first to tell you how. Not everyone has
a right to speak into your life. You are certain to get the worst of the
bargain when you exchange ideas with the wrong person. Don't follow anyone
who's not going anywhere.

With some people you spend an evening: with others you invest it. Be careful
where you stop to inquire for directions along the road of life. Wise is the
person who fortifies his life with the right friendships. If you run with
wolves, you will learn how to howl. But, if you associate with eagles, you
will learn how to soar to great heights.
"A mirror reflects a man's face, but what he is really ~ Colin Powell

Most British playwrights of my generation, as well as younger folks, apparently feel somewhat obliged to Russian literature - and not only those writing for theatres. Russian literature is part of the basic background knowledge for any writer. So there is nothing exceptional in the interest I had towards Russian literature and theatre. Frankly, I couldn't image what a culture would be like without sympathy towards Russian literature and Russia, whether we'd be talking about drama or Djagilev. ~ Tom Stoppard

Anything negative that happens to you in life can be turned into a positive as far as acting is concerned. You can draw on your experiences - it's far better than any research. ~ Kierston Wareing

I think people respond to dystopian stories because they're ways of acting out anxieties that we have and fears that we have about the future. So much media's coming at you over the Internet, your brain gets overloaded. You don't know what to do with it. And one thing you can do with it is read a story. ~ Suzanne Collins

I want to be able to follow the example of those extraordinary British actresses who move effortlessly from film to TV to theatre roles. ~ Cate Blanchett

With modeling, you pose. You want to look your best all the time. With acting, you have to be aware of the camera, but the more you show your imperfections, the better you're going to be. ~ Diane Kruger

I aspired to be a writer and then I just started getting acting work. I really didn't have a direct goal, I just knew I wanted to be in this industry telling stories and doing this for a job. I thought my path was going to be as a writer, but I'm pretty happy doing it as an actor. ~ Jake M. Johnson

Because of acting I've gotten to travel and meet so many amazing people, and they inspire new songs. ~ Emily Kinney

I'm a young actor and I haven't learned everything there is about acting. ~ Lucas Neff

After 2000 or so, I started to realize I wanted to be doing something else. I didn't want to be in front of a camera. I was frustrated. I didn't think I would stop acting, but I didn't want to be seen. ~ Ben Affleck

The theatre is my drug. And my illness is so far advanced that my physic must be of the highest quality. ~ John Wilmot

I don't know what the next acting job will be. I would love to do a comedy. ~ Rebecca Mader

That's what acting is all about - it's all about bringing truth from your own life, and putting it into your characters. If you have the advantage of using your own life in your work, that's always the way to go. ~ Michael Eklund