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He used this great, sad, motionless face to suggest various related things: a one-track mind near the track's end of pure insanity; mulish imperturbability under the wildest of circumstances; how dead a human being can get and still be alive...
-James Agee
On deadpan comedian Buster Keaton, Comedy's Greatest Era reprinted in Life, Fall 1986
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When he ran from a cop his transitions from accelerating walk to easy jog trot to brisk canter to headlong gallop to flogged-piston sprint...were as distinct and as soberly in order as an automatic gearshift.
-James Agee
On deadpan comedian Buster Keaton, Comedy's Greatest Era reprinted in Life, Fall 1986
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We become actors without realizing it, and actors without wanting to.
-Henri Frederic Amiel
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The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in their profession that the less socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.
-W. H. Auden
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I don't get acting jobs because of my looks.
-Alec Baldwin
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Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.
-Ellen Barkin
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For an actress to be a success, she must have the face of a Venus, the brains of a Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of a MaCaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros.
-Ethel Barrymore
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The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn an Event.
-Roland Barthes
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A woman in agony of spirit might turn her head just so; a man in deep humiliation probably would wring his hands in such a way. From straws like these, drawn from completely different sources, the fabric of a character may be built.
-Eleanor Robson Belmont
The Fabric of Memory, part 1 ch. 2, 1957
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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.
-Eleanor Robson Belmont
The Fabric of Memory, part 1 ch. 2, 1957
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It is not whether you really cry. It's whether the audience thinks you are crying.
-Ingrid Bergman
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You must have this charm to reach the pinnacle. It is made of everything and of nothing, the striving will, the look, the walk, the proportions of the body, the sound of the voice, the ease of the gestures. It is not at all necessary to be handsome or to be pretty; all that is needful is charm.
-Sarah Bernhardt
The Art of the Theatre, ch. 2, 1924
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The thing about anything in life is you have to get ready for it. Study, learn and in terms of acting, there's a lot to learn. The bigger culture you have in life, the better actor you'll be. You'll have more to pull on.
-Jacqueline Bisset
Interview on Chats from the Past
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To grasp the full significance of life is the actor's duty, to interpret it is his problem, and to express it his dedication.
-Marlon Brando
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Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life. The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis.
-Marlon Brando
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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
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One forgets too easily the difference between a man and his image, and that there is none between the sound of his voice on the screen and in real life.
-Robert Bresson
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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
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From '86 until the summer of last year, wherever I went, people would say, You would have made a great James Bond! Weren't you going to be James Bond? You should have been, you could have been, you may have been. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It was like unfinished business in my life. I couldn't say no to it this time around.
-Pierce Brosnan
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When I was a fireman I was in a lot of burning buildings. It was a great job, the only job I ever had that compares with the thrill of acting. Before going into a fire, there's the same surge of adrenaline you get just before the camera rolls.
-Steve Buscemi
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I am acquainted with no immaterial sensuality so delightful as good acting.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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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.
-Michael Caine
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Such is an actor's life. We must ride the waves of every film, barfing occasionally, yet maintain our dignity, even as the bulk of our Herculean efforts are keel-hauled before our very eyes. On filming MacHale's Navy
-Bruce Campbell
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The popularity of that baby-faced boy, who possessed not even the elements of a good actor, was a hallucination in the public mind, and a disgrace to our theatrical history.
-Thomas Campbell
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Until Ace Ventura, no actor had considered talking through his ass.
-Jim Carrey
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Books about Actors, Acting
