Acting quotes
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside acting — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"What we did [shooting "Fences"] was we got young students from Carnegie Mellon, the acting and theater students, and we had them as our understudies. I told them, "You have to be off book and be ready. If Viola [Davis] has to leave you have to jump in.""
"One good thing about acting in film is that it's good therapy."
"The danger chiefly lies in acting well; no crime's so great as daring to excel."
"I make preparations both to live and to die every day, but with the emphasis on not dying, and on acting as if I was going to carry on living."
"Acting to me is a very organic art form and you just go and do it. And I like to direct the same way that I like to be directed. Let me bring in what I want to bring in, and if something's wrong, just tell me about it and I'll make some corrections or adjustments. And that's what I do."
"I was never a villain on the stage. I always played strong, sympathetic types. My first stage role with a speaking part, believe it or not, was as a priest. It wasn't until I began acting in films that the producers and directors saw me primarily as a bizarre villain."
"Movie acting suits me because I only need to be good for ninety seconds at a time."
"A person will not buy from you until he is convinced that you are a friend and are acting in his best interest. You must make this clear."
"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."
"A multitude of causes unknown to former times are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor."
"Our Lord and the saints accomplished more by suffering than by acting."
"God has formed us moral agents... that we may promote the happiness of those with whom He has placed us in society, by acting honestly towards all, benevolently to those who fall within our way, respecting sacredly their rights, bodily and mental, and cherishing especially their freedom of conscience, as we value our own."
"The reason why I could get into acting was because it takes nothing to get out of who I am and go into somebody else."
"Incidentally, I'm still looking for acting work, my first love."
"Acting is always a challenge."
"Maybe if I completely shaved my head and get the frost out of my moustache, maybe I could get one of those serious acting jobs."
"We are seeing entertainment become politics and we're seeing people acting out in ways that are extremely violent and destabilizing. No rules apply. We're in an era of no rules now, it seems."
"A lot of what acting is paying attention."
"While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance."
"If I were to talk to Lindsay Lohan, I'd encourage her to get the hell out of acting and into something soothing. Take up botany or something."
