Acting And Actors

(123 votes)   She represents the un-vowed aspiration of the male human being, his potential infidelity -- and infidelity of a very special kind, which would lead him to the opposite of his wife, to the ''woman of wax'' whom he could model at will, make and unmake in any way he wished, even unto death.

Marguerite Duras
1914-, French Author, Filmmaker

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(123 votes)   Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you -- tripping on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as Leif the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say, the whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.

William Shakespeare
1564-1616, British Poet, Playwright, Actor

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(108 votes)   I can't tell you how many shows I've done with full-blown migraine headaches.

Jonathan Taylor Thomas
1981-, American Actor, Teen heartthrob

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(104 votes)   The actor searches vainly for the sound of a vanished tradition, and critic and audience follow suit. We have lost all sense of ritual and ceremony -- whether it be connected with Christmas, birthdays or funerals -- but the words remain with us and old impulses stir in the marrow. We feel we should have rituals, we should do something about getting them and we blame the artists for not finding them for us. So the artist sometimes attempts to find new rituals with only his imagination as his source: he imitates the outer form of ceremonies, pagan or baroque, unfortunately adding his own trapping -- the result is rarely convincing. And after the years and years of weaker and waterier imitations we now find ourselves rejecting the very notion of a holy stage. It is not the fault of the holy that it has become a middle-class weapon to keep the children good.

Peter (Stephen Paul) Brook
1925-, British Theatre and Film Director

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(97 votes)   If a farmer fills his barn with grain, he gets mice. If he leaves it empty, he gets actors.

Bill Vaughan
1915-1977, American Author, Journalist

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(95 votes)   She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.

Dorothy Parker
1893-1967, American Humorous Writer

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(92 votes)   I'm not an actress who can create a character. I play me.

Mary Tyler Moore
1936-, American Actress

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(90 votes)   Actors ought to be larger than life. You come across quite enough ordinary, nondescript people in daily life and I don't see why you should be subjected to them on the stage too.

Donald Sinden
1923-, British Actor

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(88 votes)   The most minor gifts and not a very high class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four.

Katharine Hepburn
1907-, American Actress, Writer

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(87 votes)   A man who strains himself on the stage is bound, if he is any good, to strain all the people sitting in the stalls.

Bertolt Brecht
1898-1956, German Dramatist, Poet

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(87 votes)   Actors are loved because they are unoriginal. Actors stick to their script. The unoriginal man is loved by the mediocrity because this kind of ''artistic'' expression is something to which the merest five-eighth can climb.

Patrick Kavanagh
1905-1967, Irish Poet, Author

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(87 votes)   Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

George Bernard Shaw
1856-1950, Irish-born British Dramatist

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(86 votes)   I really think that effective acting has to do literally with the movement of molecules.

Glenn Close
1947-, American Actress

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(86 votes)   Until Ace Ventura, no actor had considered talking through his ass.

Jim Carrey
1962-, Canadian-born American Comedian, Actor

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(85 votes)   An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat
1955-, Hong Kong Actor

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