Hello,

I will occasionally post quotes that seem relevant to actors here. Please contribute, but I request we DISCUSS quotes on different threads, so that this thread can be purely quotes...THANKS! - Jason

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"Why is it that people who cannot show feelings presume that it is a strength and not a weakness?" - May Sarton

"Don't look forward to the day you stop suffering, becomes when it comes, you will KNOW you are dead." - Tennessee Williams

(When asked how he achieved such success): "I just kept showing up for auditions." --Dustin Hoffman

Great topic, JB!

Here's a couple from two women I really admire:

"Acting- it's this early need, made of dozens of ingredients, the strongest of which is you've got to say something to people, and they must pay attention, listen to you say it." -- Anne Bancroft

"Shut up and listen. Then react. And then act." -- Lucille Ball

I like the Marlon Brando quote that Forest Whitaker said at the Oscars this year, but I can't find it just yet, but I found another Brando quote that interested me.

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

"If you're really listening, if you're awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly." - Andrew Harvey

"No matter what you're feeling, the only way to get a difficult feeling to go away is simply to love yourself for it. If you think you're stupid, then love yourself for feeling that way. It's a paradox, but it works. To heal, you must be the first one to shine the light of compassion on any areas within you that you feel are unacceptable." - Christiana Norththrup

Jason says: Actors are awake to themselves and to the world on the most profound levels! You have to know about and accept all the parts of yourselves, the light and the dark within you -- as an actor -- as a human being fully experiencing life.

You have to use the depth of who you are when you act...and for most of us, this takes a lot of healing work. We've been taught to dislike parts of ourselves, to be embarrassed or ashamed of parts of who we are -- to disown parts of our imagination. But we must embrace all these parts of ourselves, while not becoming them. Then, we can let the world see who we are, as the "character," freely and deeply -- in service of the audience. This is what great actors do.

"If you are to do justice to [the great roles], you must fly up to them -- rather than dragging them down to you -- by expanding your range of knowledge and strengthening your imagination. Your imagination must become as real to you as your memories and feelings. What you take into yourself about psychology, politics, sociology, history and so on, will allow you to reach places in yourself you didn't know existed. No line, no image, no thought can be left general. Each must be specific and personal. Your work is not complete until this is so." - Harold Guskin

I thought this was an interesting excerpt from a Tom Hanks interview with Charlie Rose:

CHARLIE ROSE: Is anything missing in terms of, when you look at the sort of… craft of acting, that you wish you had?

TOM HANKS: Oh, well, it’s always a battle against self-consciousness. It’s hard to get past the realization that you’re pretending to be somebody and people are looking at you. I wish I had had more basic things, more tools. I wish I had been forced to take a dance class. I wish I had been forced to get up and sing in front of people. I wish I had gone to that kind of performance school in which you have to get past the self-consciousness of not being able to do it well and still having to do it.

This is just a great quote for artists period!
Enjoy...

"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open...You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."
-- Martha Graham--

"Our everyday self is a narrow construct...Our total self is far broader, ultimately infinite. Actors who seem to be playing themselves are actually playing roles they have become so skillful at that they seem pure and natural...Much bad Acting is the result of being too close to the Actor's everyday self, confining him in its rigid mold." - Richard Hornby

"We talk and act a bit differently in bed than at work, or at a bar, or at a cocktail party, or at a PTA meeting. The idea of 'just being yourself' is a total abstraction, for we are many selves and we wear many masks." - Robert Cohen

"If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable. [You must] reach the emotional and intellectual level of ability where you can go out stark naked, emotionally, in front of an audience." - Jack Lemon

"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." - Alec Guinness

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- Jason Bennett

"One loses the capacity to grieve as a child grieves, or to rage as a child rages: hotly, despairingly, with tears of passion. One grows up, one becomes civilized, one learns one's manners, and consequently can no longer manage these two functions -- sorrow and anger -- adequately." - Anita Brookner

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"An actor is at his best a kind of unfrocked priest who, for an hour or two, can call on heaven and hell to mesmerize a group of innocents." - Alec Guinness

- Jason Bennett

When actors "fake" an emotion it is called "indicating" or being "presentational." This always takes away from the individual performance and then the scene and perhaps the entire film loses the audience's sense of belief.

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For it is not a game of charades, this acting world of ours; it's the everlasting search for truth!
— Laurence Olivier


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to quote.. Sanford Meisner, "living truthfully in imagined circumstances." Believing in the old saying that "There are no great actors, only great (or not so great) ensembles."


IAFT

"One way we can enliven the imagination is to push it toward the illogical. We're not scientists. We don't always have to make the logical, reasonable leap." - Stella Adler

"We don't live for realities, but for the fantasies, the dreams of what might be. If we lived for reality, we'd be dead, every last one of us. Only dreams keep us going...When you are acting, don't settle for anything less than the biggest dream for your character's future." - Michael Shurtleff

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great ones make you feel that you, too, can become great.

-Mark Twain.

"90% of success is just showing up." -Woody Allen

quote:

Originally posted by Jenni1:
"90% of success is just showing up." -Woody Allen

Yes, I love that one, too!

"An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so he must be willing to accept all experiences that life can offer." - Marlon Brando

"I love acting. It is so much more real than life." - Oscar Wilde

This one just made me giggle.

"Actors are basically drag queens. People will tell you they act because they want to heal mankind or, you know, explore the nature of the human psyche. Yes, maybe. But basically we just want to put on a frock and dance." - Colin Firth