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The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays that part.
-Miguel de Cervantes
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The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting.
-Charlie Chaplin
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Actors search for rejection. If they don't get it they reject themselves.
-Chevy Chase
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When an actor has money, he doesn't send letters, but telegrams.
-Anton Chekhov
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An actor is only merchandise.
-Chow Yun-Fat
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I really think that effective acting has to do literally with the movement of molecules.
-Glenn Close
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To see him act is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Celebrity is death --- celebrity -- that's the worst thing that can happen to an actor.
-John Cusack
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Some scenes you juggle two balls, some scenes you juggle three balls, some scenes you can juggle five balls. The key is always to speak in your own voice. Speak the truth. That's Acting 101. Then you start putting layers on top of that. On his acting techniques
-Vincent D'Onofrio
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I am the Fred Astaire of karate.
-Jean-Claude Van Damme
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Somebody told me I should put a pebble in my mouth to cure my stuttering. Well, I tried it, and during a scene I swallowed the pebble. That was the end of that.
-Marion Davies
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You name it and I've done it. I'd like to say I did it my way. But that line, I'm afraid, belongs to someone else.
-Sammy Davis Jr.
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The real actor has a direct line to the collective heart.
-Bette Davis
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I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don't remember ever having seen one weep.
-Denis Diderot
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I'd prefer not to be the pretty thing in a film. It's such a bloody responsibility to look cute, because people know when you don't and they're like, They're trying to pass her off as the cute girl and she's looking like a bedraggled sack of potatoes.
-Minnie Driver
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I mean, the question actors most often get asked is how they can bear saying the same things over and over again, night after night, but God knows the answer to that is, don't we all anyway; might as well get paid for it.
-Elaine Dundy
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Acting doesn't bring anything to a text. On the contrary, it detracts from it.
-Marguerite Duras
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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
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If a person were to try stripping the disguises from actors while they play a scene upon stage, showing to the audience their real looks and the faces they were born with, would not such a one spoil the whole play ? And would not the spectators think he deserved to be driven out of the theatre with brickbats, as a drunken disturber ?... Now what else is the whole life of mortals but a sort of comedy, in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each one his part, until the manager waves them off the stage ? Moreover, this manager frequently bids the same actor to go back in a different costume, so that he who has but lately played the king in scarlet now acts the flunkey in patched clothes. Thus all things are presented by shadows.
-Desiderius Erasmus
The Praise of Folly
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Mr. Clarke played the King all evening as though under constant fear that someone else was about to play the Ace.
-Eugene Field
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Show me a great actor and I'll show you a lousy husband. Show me a great actress, and you've seen the devil.
-W. C. Fields
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The essence of acting is the conveyance of truth through the medium of the actor's mind and person. The science of acting deals with the perfecting of that medium.
-Minnie Maddern Fiske
Mrs. Fiske: Her Views on Actors, Acting and the Problems of Production, ch. 5, by Alexander Woollcott (1917)
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I suppose that Paderewski can play superbly, if not quite at his best, while his thoughts wander to the other end of the world, or possibly busy themselves with a computation of the receipts as he gazes out across the auditorium. I know a great actor, a master technician, can let his thoughts play truant from the scene...
-Minnie Maddern Fiske
Mrs. Fiske: Her Views on Actors, Acting and the Problems of Production, ch. 4, by Alexander Woollcott (1917)
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Above all, ignore the audience....
http://www.poemhunter.com/quotations/famous.asp?people=Minnie%20Maddern%20Fiske
-Minnie Maddern Fiske
As quoted in Actors on Acting, rev. ed., part 13, by Toby Cole and Helen Krich (1970). Said in 1917, to Alexander Woollcott.
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Go into the streets, into the slums, into the fashionable quarters. Go into the day courts and the night courts. Become acquainted with sorrow, with many kinds of sorrow. Learn of the wonderful heroism of the poor, of the incredible generosity of the very poor
-Minnie Maddern Fiske
Mrs. Fiske: Her Views on Actors, Acting and the Problems of Production, ch. 3, by Alexander Woollcott (1917)
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Books about Actors, Acting
