Theatre Actors Quotes

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

When you're an actor and you walk into a theatre where your movie is playing, you're kinda proud. "Look at my skill!" ~ James Hetfield

Actors are the only honest hypocrites. ~ William Hazlitt

First of all, I choose the great roles, and if none of these come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don't come, I choose the ones that pay the rent. ~ Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

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

Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances. ~ Sanford Meisner

There is a whole bunch of great British actors of my age who aren't film stars or theatre actors; they're very much both. ~ Harry Lloyd

To save the Theatre, the Theatre must be destroyed, and actors and actresses all die of the Plague ... they make art impossible. ~ Eleanora Duse

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

There is no more reason for a room on a stage to be a reproduction of an actual room than for an actor who plays the part of Napoleon to be Napoleon, or for an actor who plays Death in the old morality play to be dead. ~ Robert Edmond Jones

The Old Vic has always been first and foremost an actors' theatre, a home for great talent and memorable performances. ~ Kevin Spacey

You can see some very great theatre actors who don't work at all well on screen. They're trying too hard at it. ~ Kevin Whately

What was good was that I had friends who were actors and in theatre who were really good, because I think my strengths were visual, like pictorial. ~ Rob Urbinati

It is very hard to cast a number of plays adequately from the same company of actors without several parts being miscast. ~ John Gielgud

I trained as a theater actor and you had a bare stage and you had to pretend, one prop and you are in the middle of 8th Ave. and traffic is just going by. ~ Benicio Del Toro

An actor is part illusionist, part artist, part ham. ~ Oscar Wilde

I have a theory ... Theatre actors are better at auditions than film actors. ~ Shaun Sipos

I'm convinced that theatre is a horrible business. Make this the headline. You have to be on the spot every night as an actor. You are damn lonesome standing out there. ~ Walter D. Asmus

In comedy, beware the split focus. The audience should focus on the face of the actor. The audience must see the setup. If there is action elsewhere on the stage, the comic line can be lost. ~ James Carver

It is a great help for a man to be in love with himself. For an actor, however, it is absolutely essential. ~ Robert Morley

I made mistakes in drama. I thought drama was when actors cried. But drama is when the audience cries. ~ Frank Capra

The Theatre of the Oppressed is theatre in this most archaic application of the word. In this usage, all human beings are Actors (they act!) and Spectators (they observe!). ~ Augusto Boal

It is very good, Wisehammer, it's very well written, but it's too-too-political. It will be considered provocative."
"You don't want me to say it."
"Not tonight. We have many people against us."
"I could tone it down. I could omit 'We left our country for our country's good.'"
"That's the best line. ~ Timberlake Wertenbaker

My mother's side of the family was in the production side of theatre. My grandfather, Jose Vega, was a general manager for Neil Simon shows on Broadway. ~ Yancy Butler

This sectarianism is an attempt to leap away from the narrow path of the paradox and become a tragic hero at a cheap price. The tragic hero expresses the universal and sacrifices himself for it. The sectarian punchinello, instead of that, has a private theatre, i.e. several good friends and comrades who represent the universal ~ Soren Kierkegaard

It's dangerous for one actor to advise another one, especially when you're not in charge. On the set, I'm never gonna tell another person, "Here's what I think you should do." That's a discussion they should only have with the writers, producers, and directors. ~ David Koechner

Many plays - certainly mine - are like blank checks. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them. ~ Thornton Wilder

It's so great as an actor to get the opportunity to do something that's incredibly truthful. ~ Charlize Theron

The only way that Hollywood ever skews toward liberal is because part of what we make out of Hollywood involves writers, actors, directors, musicians, set designers, and photographers. In general, people like that are going to be more progressive, more open minded, a little more altruistic. ~ Adam McKay

One of the great things about my job is I get to do all of these things that I may not experience had I not been an actor. ~ Hilary Swank

Dimple could see, flush from the endorphins of a great performance, why actors and performers got addicted to this kind of thing. It had always seemed unfathomable to her, choosing a career where all you did was put yourself out in front of hundreds or thousands of people and risked rejection in real time. But if they felt even half of what she was feeling now when it went well... ~ Sandhya Menon

I'm not a comedian. I don't do stand-up. I don't tell jokes. I'm a comedic actor, and approach my work that way. The comedy comes through the character. ~ Eugene Levy

You have to love, without judgment, every actor that you're working with to make beauty. ~ Nicole Kidman

I wanted to be a movie star. But movie stars are not what they used to be. ~ Lindsay Lohan

I seldom feel comfortable in a theatre. I always feel like I own a cinema. I feel equally happy in an empty one as a full one. Probably happier in an empty one! ~ Martin McDonagh

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

This power that I'm supposed to have over women was never noticed when I was a stage actor on Broadway. I don't know when I got it. And by God, I can't explain it. ~ Clark Gable

The most brilliant actor that I have ever worked with. I've liked others very much more. ~ Anna Neagle

I don't actually like blocking actors. I prefer giving actors freedom. They don't have to step on a precise mark with me. Instead of giving marks to the actors I like to give marks to the camera. ~ Jose Padilha

There are so many talented young actors in the industry. I'm just happy to have a job! ~ Colton Haynes

Money isn't a major motivating force in my life. Nor is my profession. There are other things that I care more about than being an actor. ~ Kevin Costner

Opera is musical theatre, and the music can teach you so much about the theatre. Very often I use musical terms to think about how I comport myself on stage: I employ 'rubati,' 'ostinati,' 'cadenze.' Finding these parallels is very fascinating for me. ~ Toni Servillo

I started out in theatre, and there's no better feeling than the adrenaline of being on stage. ~ Georgia Groome

I'm an actor. And like a lot of actors, it's very important that everybody loves you all the time. ~ Romola Garai

When they were first casting for my part in the movie, the producers asked if I had any suggestions.
"I'll tell you what I don't want," I said. "I don't want someone in their early twenties who's never had any heartbreak or gone through anything difficult."
I heard later that Clint thought he'd have a hard time casting me. I hope that was because I'm such a complex but soulful person, though you never know.
When he settled on Sienna Miller, he hit it on the head. The first time I talked to her, it felt like I was speaking to an old girlfriend. She got everything. Whether I explained how it felt the first time Chris kissed me, or how it felt when he held me, she completely understood. She's a woman with deep empathy as well as a great actor.
My part--her part--in the movie isn't very big, but it's important, and I felt it was in good hands. She knows what it's like to be a mom, and she knows how it feels to worry about someone and to live through situations you can't control.
Still, I remained nervous: What if, despite all their efforts, they didn't manage to convey what Chris was all about? The director, the actors, they were all at the top of their field, but that was no guarantee that they could pull it off. ~ Taya Kyle

The actors are different, although I didn't set out to be different. My inspiration came from people like Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence and Will Smith. The genre is what it is. My inspiration was drawn from great movies like 48 Hours, Bad Boys and Rush Hour. ~ Tracy Morgan

I like to be a lot of different things at once and dress different ways and I change my hair all the time, so being an actor lets me live out the fantasy of living out 100,000 different lifetimes in one, without all of the repercussions. ~ Mae Whitman

I just wanted to be a composer; I became an actor by default, really. I got a scholarship to a college of music and drama, hoping to take a scholarship in music. But I ended up as an acting student, so I've stuck with that for the last 50-odd years. ~ Anthony Hopkins

My mum raised us on classic movies and a lot of musical theatre. ~ Jake Gyllenhaal

I started acting when I was 13 years old and I feel like I really admire actors who are these kind of amazing shape-changing people, that they almost can turn themselves into other people. ~ Ethan Hawke

I began playing Branson during the 1992 season and was a little amazed. There were about 30 celebrity theatres there and more are being added all the time. ~ Charley Pride

When I'm not working ... I'm an actor! I'm auditioning! I like to hang out, have fun, drink, club, meet boys, look for boyfriends, play MASH, the usual. ~ Xosha Roquemore

Every character lives in ever actor and if you're doing your job right, you're just accessing that part of your fantasy life. I can kill someone just as quickly as I can have sex with someone. You can switch that instinct, no matter what - you can pretend anything. ~ Matthew Lillard

I'm not actually a psychopath. I don't look evil. People don't normally want to put me in the same kind of things afterward, so I'm looking forward to people taking a few risks and hopefully seeing me as the character actor that I think I am. ~ David Oakes

You can repeat things because it's on a set and there are actors. But if it's a great moment and you don't capture it, it's rare to get that moment again. ~ Larry Charles

So from an actor's perspective, you really have no idea how you're acting. ~ Ice-T

I find that a lot of actors who are good and open to challenges have lived a full life. When you walk into an audition, you have more to say for yourself because you come from the real world. It's more enticing for directors, I think. ~ Idris Elba

I don't consider an actor a star if he's paid $20 million and grimaces in front of the camera and has a stunt man stand in for him. They may be fine actors, but they're not role models. The real stars are wearing body armor in 130-degree heat ... They're getting shot at and they don't have any stunt doubles standing in for them. ~ Ben Stein

Look at a guy like Ian McKellen, who is eighty or whatever, and he's just loving his work, and you can see that in the work. That defines what type of actor you are. And what kind of people want to work with you. And whether you can do this job for a long, long time. ~ Jason Clarke

Trying to make something as tricky as 'Room' really believable is extremely hard, and it largely rests with that relationship between the actors and the director, and the director and the crew. ~ Lenny Abrahamson

Ultimately, I felt fortunate, because in many ways I did identify with aspects of being gay that were very stereotypical. I was a big theatre kid in high school, I was creative, I was very emotionally sensitive, even hypersensitive. I loved female divas. ~ Christopher Rice