Quotes starting with A Page 1553

“An actor is at most a poet and at least an entertainer.”

“An actor is just a part of a movie, but director - he is the movie.”

“An actor is like an instrument, tune them, play them the right way.”

Way Play Actors Instruments Tunes Right Way

“An actor is looking for conflict. Conflict is what creates drama. We are taught to avoid trouble [so] actors don't realize they must go looking for it. Plays are written about...the extraordinary, the unusual, the climaxes. The more conflict actors find, the more interesting the performance.”

Play Actors Realizing Interesting Acting Written Trouble Taught Drama Conflict Performances Extraordinary Unusual Climax

Author:Michael Shurtleff

“An actor is never so great as when he reminds you of an animal - falling like a cat, lying like a dog, moving like a fox.”

Moving Lying Fall Actors Animal Acting Dog Cat Falling In Love Foxes

Author:Francois Truffaut

“An actor is only merchandise.”

Actors Acting Merchandise

Author:Chow Yun-Fat

“An actor is part illusionist, part artist, part ham.”

Artist Actors Theatre Ham Illusionists

Author:Oscar Wilde

“An actor is somebody who communicates someone else's words and emotions to an audience. It's not me. It's what writers want me to be.”

Want Actors Emotion Audience Communicate Want Me Maggie

Author:Maggie Smith

“An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument.”

Actors Instruments Supposed To Be Sensitive

Author:Marilyn Monroe

“An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument. Isaac Stern takes good care of his violin. What if everybody jumped on his violin?”

Ifs Care Actors Inspiring Instruments Supposed To Be Sensitive What If Violin Isaac

Author:Marilyn Monroe

“An actor is supposed to emulate life. Instead, alas, many are imitating other actors. You don't fashion your knowledge of theatre or your approach to a role on the basis of what other actors have done. This kind of thinking is a great danger, especially in dealing with TV producers who frequently say things like, 'This is a Sean Connery type.'”

Thinking Kind Done Actors Roles Fashion Danger Tvs Type Approach Bases Theatre Producers Alas Emulate Sean Imitating Imitating Others

Author:Theodore Bikel

“An actor is totally vulnerable. His total personality is exposed to critical judgment - his intellect, his bearing, his diction, his whole appearance. In short, his ego.”

Whole Actors Acting Personality Ego Judgment Appearance Critical Intellect Vulnerable Exposed Diction Best Acting

Author:Alec Guinness

“An actor knows two important things - to be honest in what he is doing and to be in touch with the audience. That's not bad advice for a politician either.”

Knows Two Important Actors Audience Advice Honest Politician Important Things Theatre Being Honest Bad Advice

Author:Ronald Reagan

Source: Speaking my mind: selected speeches

“An actor must communicate his author's given message--comedy, tragedy, serio- comedy; then comes his unique moment, as he is confronted by the looked-for, yet at times unexpected, reaction of the audience. This split second is his; he is in command of his medium; the effect vanishes into thin air; but that moment has a power all its own and, like power in any form, is stimulating and alluring.”

Moments Form Actors Given Acting Power Audience Comedy Air Effects Messages Unique Tragedy Communicate Reactions Command Mediums Unexpected That Moment Splits Alluring Thin Air

Author:Eleanor Robson Belmont

Source: The Fabric of Memory

“An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so he must be willing to accept all experiences that life can offer.”

Inspirational Motivational Order Actors Acting Accepting Willing Offers Theatre

Author:Marlon Brando

“An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so must be willing to accept all the experiences life has to offer. In fact, he must seek out more of life than life puts at his feet.”

Facts Order Actors Acting Accepting Feet Willing Offers

Author:James Dean

“An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so must be willing to accept all the experiences life has to offer. In fact, he must seek out more of life than life puts at his feet. In the short span of his lifetime, an actor must learn all there is to know, experience all there is to experience, or approach that state as closely as possible. He must be superhuman in his efforts to store away in the core of his subconscious everything that he might be called upon to use in the expression of his art.”

Knows Art States Facts Use Might Order Actors Effort Accepting Feet Willing Expression Offers Approach Lifetime Stores Core Subconscious Superhuman

Author:James Dean

“An actor must make his needs (goals, wants, objectives) so strong that he is willing to interfere with the other actor in order to get what he needs. Interfering means getting in their way so that what you want is stronger than what they want.”

Way Want Needs Mean Order Actors Strong Goal Acting Willing Stronger What You Want Objectives Interfere

Author:Michael Shurtleff

“An actor needs something to stabilize his personality, something to nail down what he really is, not what he is currently pretending to be.”

Needs Actors Personality Pretending Nails

Author:Humphrey Bogart

“An actor needs to be not remotely anywhere close to in control, and a filmmaker has to be totally in control.”

Needs Actors Filmmaker

Author:Johnny Depp

“An actor puts himself in the hands of a director. And the director's first responsibility, obviously, is to tell the story, but the smallest thing that's not true reads on the screen. So if a director sees that an actor is not believable, he needs to help him become believable.”

Ifs Needs Firsts Helping Stories Hands Actors Responsibility Directors Screens Smallest Believable

Author:Tobin Bell

“An actor really is a kind of intermediary between an audience and the piece, whether it's a play or movie.”

Kind Play Actors Audience Pieces Movie

Author:Christopher Walken

“An actor really suffers when the director isn't prepared because you start running out of time for the shoot and then have to do it fast.”

Running Suffering Actors Directors Prepared Running Out Of Time Time Running Out

Author:Carol Kane

“An actor remembers his first piece of published praise. It is written on his heart.”

Firsts Heart Remember Actors Pieces Written Praise

Author:Conrad Veidt

“An actor rides in a bus or railroad train; he sees a movement and applies it to a new role. The whole garment in which the actor hides himself is made of small externals of observation fitted to his conception of a role.”

Made Whole Actors Roles Movement Train Observation Conception Bus Garments Railroads

Author:Eleanor Robson Belmont

Source: The Fabric of Memory

“An actor said recently that, unless you're a parent, you shouldn't play a parent in a film. I don't know who said it, but I disagree. I understand that maybe there are aspects that you don't understand, or maybe this actor or actress had a really strong recent experience with having their first or second or third born child. I don't know. As a dad, I get that. I get that there is no love like it. But, at the same time, love is love.”

Knows Firsts Children Said Play Film Actors Strong Parent Born Love Is Dad Aspect Thirds Actresses Disagree No Love Time Love

Author:Colin Farrell

“An actor should always let humility outweigh ambition.”

Should Actors Humility Ambition

Author:Anna Kendrick

“An actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand.”

Should Hands Able Universe Actors Palms

Author:Laurence Sterne

“An actor should be ready to play any role within reason. For example, I think the most ridiculous thing for me to do would be to try and play Shakespeare.”

Thinking Should Trying Reason Play Would Be Actors Roles Example Ready Ridiculous Ridiculous Things

Author:Glenn Ford

“An actor should never be larger than the film he's in.”

Should Film Actors Acting

Author:Christian Bale

“An actor should refine public taste.”

Should Actors Taste

Author:Aristophanes

“An actor should take lessons from a painter and a sculptor.”

Should Actors Acting Lessons Painter Sculptors

Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“An actor shouldn't have to leave the set and go home and write a bunch of stuff for a bunch of other people, the next day. I found it very unpleasant.”

People Writing Home Next Actors Found Stuff Bunch Next Day

Author:Johnny Depp

“An actor shouldn't undergo psychoanalysis, because there are a lot of things you're better off not knowing.”

Actors Knowing Comedy Not Knowing Better Off Psychoanalysis

Author:Paul Lynde

“An actor stands in front of a camera onstage, and he controls time and space for the audience. He tells them how long this will take, where to look, when to look, what to think about it. And good performers should be able to do their part with the sound off.”

Thinking Should Looks Long Able Actors Sound Space Audience Fronts Cameras Performers Time And Space

Author:John Michael Higgins

“An actor succeeds or does not succeed. A writer has some hope even if he is not appreciated. He assumes that his works will bear witness to what he was. At best the actor will leave us a photograph, and nothing of what he was himself, his gestures and his silences, his gasping or his panting with love, will come down to us. For him, not to be known is not to act, and not acting is dying a hundred times with all the creatures he would have brought to life or resuscitated.”

Albert Camus The Myth Of Sisyphus

Author:Albert Camus

Source: The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“An actor that tells you that they have real choices between material is, for the most part, lying. There are very few people that have opportunities. But what you do have where I am in my career, is saying no to the things that seem repetitious. For me, I always look for material that allows me to bring my worldview to it. And those opportunities, since the beginning of The Shield, have grown exponentially.”

People Real Lying Choices Opportunity Worldview

Author:Walton Goggins

“An actor uses his body as a tool and an instrument. In the same way a musician plays an instrument, the actor uses his body to convey feeling and emotion. An animator uses a pencil or a computer to create the same thing, the same exact way... An actor is taking words that are not his own, and he has to bring some kind of authentic life to those words. It's the same goal, to create this authentic life. Even if it's a drawing, or if it's a cartoon, you're still trying to create authenticity because, if the character emotes authentically, it has a power to connect with the audience.”

“An actor wants to get up every day and they can't think of anything particularly more fun to do than getting into a made-up situation and living it out as if it's real.”

Ifs Thinking Want Made Real Actors Fun Situation Get Up

Author:Jeff Goldblum

“An actor who is good at comedy can also be very good at drama, but not necessarily vice versa.”

Actors Comedy Drama Very Good Vices Vice Versa

Author:Desi Arnaz

Source: A Book

“An actor who knows his business ought to be able to make the London telephone directory sound enthralling.”

Knows Able Funny Actors Sound Acting Ought Humorous London Telephones

Author:Donald Sinden

“An actor who's a control freak, that doesn't work. We have to be malleable. We cannot come in and try to control or dominate.”

Trying Actors Freak Control Freak

Author:Nicole Kidman

“An actor will use every piece of information at their disposal, or a good actor will.”

Use Actors Pieces Information Good Actors

Author:Jessica Pare

“An actor without a playwright is like a hole without a doughnut.”

Actors Literature Holes Playwright Doughnut

Author:George Jean Nathan

Source: Encyclopedia of the Theatre

“An actor without an audience is rehearsing.”

Actors Audience Rehearsing

Author:Sarah Wayne Callies

“An actor without techies is a naked person standing in the dark trying to emote. A techie without actors is a person with marketable skills.”

Trying Persons Actors Dark Skills Standing Theatre Naked Emote Techie

Author:Mark Leslie

“An actor works with their soul and their thought”

Soul Actors

Author:Monica Bellucci

“An actor would be foolish to do something that might hold up the picture, or more importantly incapacitate him. If an actor does do a stunt he needs to make sure a stunt man stands by to see that it's done correctly.”

Ifs Men Needs Doe Done Might Would Be Actors Foolish

Author:Glenn Ford

“An actor's a guy who, if you ain't talking about him, ain't listening.”

Ifs Guy Actors Talking Listening

Author:Marlon Brando

“An actor's career doesn't feel like just one career to me. It feels like about five or six. Because every six or seven years, you look in the mirror and you have a completely different product.”

Feels Years Looks Different Actors Careers Five Products Six Mirrors Seven Just One Seven Years

Author:Ron Livingston

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