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The actor who lets the dust accumulate on his Ibsen, his Shakespeare, and his Bible, but pores greedily over every little column of theatrical news, is a lost soul.
-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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As soon as I suspect a fine effect is being achieved by accident I lose interest. I am not interested...in unskilled labor. ...The scientific actor is an even worker. Any one may achieve on some rare occasion an outburst of genuine feeling, a gesture of imperishable beauty, a ringing accent of truth; but your scientific actor knows how he did it. He can repeat it again and again and again. He can be depended on.
-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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... most of all the actor will love the boys and girls, the men and women, who sit in the cheapest seats, in the very last row of the top gallery. They have given more than they can afford to come. In the most self-effacing spirit of fellowship they are listening to catch every word, watching to miss no slightest gesture or expression. To save his life the actor cannot help feeling these nearest and dearest. He cannot help wishing to do his best for them. He cannot help loving them best of all.
-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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The best actors do not let the wheels show.
-Henry Fonda
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A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.
-Jane Fonda
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I'm an assistant storyteller. It's like being a waiter or a gas-station attendant, but I'm waiting on six million people a week, if I'm lucky. On being an actor
-Harrison Ford
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The actor's popularity is evanescent; applauded today, forgotten tomorrow.
-Edwin Forrest
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I was born at the age of twelve on a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot.
-Judy Garland
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An actor is a guy who, if you ain't talking about him, he ain't listening.
-George Glass
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Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.
-Jeff Goldblum
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Acting is happy agony.
-Sir Alec Guinness
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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.
-Sir Alec Guinness
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More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.
-Uta Hagen
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Acting on a good idea is better than just having a good idea.
-Robert Half
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A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar -- you pretend it's not there.
-Daryl Hannah
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Acting is bad acting if the actor himself gets emotional in the act of making the audience cry. The object is to make the audience cry, but not cry yourself. The emotion has to be inside the actor, not outside. If you stand there weeping and wailing, all your emotions will go down your shirt and nothing will go out to your audience. Audience control is really about the actor
-Rex Harrison
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They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.
-William Hazlitt
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We must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all.
-William Hazlitt
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They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. We see ourselves at second-hand in them: they show us all that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be. What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as they imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them. There is no class of society whom so many persons regard with affection as actors.
-William Hazlitt
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Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.
-Katharine Hepburn
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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
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It's a business you go into because you're an egocentric. It's a very embarrassing profession.
-Katharine Hepburn
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If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.
-Katharine Hepburn
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I never said all actors are cattle, what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.
-Alfred Hitchcock
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You reach a point where you say you're not going to do juveniles any longer.
-Ron Howard
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Books about Actors, Acting
