50 Best Acting Quotes for Success

“The best acting is instinctive. It's not intellectual, it's not mechanical, it's instinctive.” — Craig MacDonald. Here are 50 Best Acting Quotes.

Acting Quotes

1. “An actor is a fool for God” — Gerardine Clark

2. “There's a difference between playing and playing games. The former is an act of joy, the latter — an act.”
― Vera Nazarian

3. “The best acting is instinctive. It's not intellectual, it's not mechanical, it's instinctive.” — Craig MacDonald

4. “The best acting is instinctive. It's not intellectual, it's not mechanical, it's instinctive.”— Gerardine Clark

5. “Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life.” — Bette Davis

6. “Acting is standing up naked and turning around very slowly.” — Rosalind Russell

7. “Stop explaining yourself. Shut up and act!” — Craig MacDonald

8. “Find in yourself those human things which are universal.” — Sanford Meisner

9. “The more personal, the more universal.” — Gary Ballinger

10. “An actor has to burn inside with an outer ease.” — Michael Chekhov

11. “Use what you know. Don't worry about what you don't know.” — Michael Shurtleff

12. “The actor has to develop his body. The actor has to work on his voice. But the most important thing the actor has to work on is his mind.” — Stella Adler

Acting Quotes

13. “An ounce of behavior is worth a pound of words.” — Sanford Meisner

14. “Conflict is what creates drama. The more conflict actors find, the more interesting the performance.” — Michael Shurtleff

15. “If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable.” — Jack Lemmon

16. “Creating relationship is the heart of acting. It is basic. It is essential.” — Michael Shurtleff

17. “Listening is not merely hearing. Listening is reacting. Listening is being affected by what you hear. Listening is active.”      — Michael Shurtleff

18. “Honesty isn't enough for me. That becomes very boring. If you can convince people what you're doing is real and it's also bigger than life -- that's exciting.” — Gene Hackman

19. “Whatever you decide is your motivation in the scene, the opposite of that is also true and should be in it.” — Michael Shurtleff

20. “My job is usually to express emotion as freely as possible.” — Meryl Streep

21. “The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays that part.” — Miguel de Cervantes

22. “Actors think more with their hearts than with their heads.” — William Esper

23. “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

24. “ Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made.” — George Burns

Acting Quotes

25. “Acting is not about being someone different. It’s finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there.”― Meryl Streep

26. “I love acting. It is so much more real than life” — Oscar Wilde

27. “If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent.” — Thornton Wilder

28. “The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place. It is the place people come to see the truth about life and the social situation.” — Stella Adler

29. “I'm a skilled professional actor. Whether or not I've any talent is beside the point.” — Michael Caine

30. “Acting in theatre or television or screen is only for the irrecoverably diseased, those so smitten with the need that there is no choice.” — Michael Shurtleff

31. “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

32. “There's nothing more boring than unintelligent actors, because all they have to talk about is themselves and acting. There have to be other things.” — Tim Robbins

33. “Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.”— Stella Adler

34. “I think your self emerges more clearly over time.” — Meryl Streep

35. “Study, find all the good teachers and study with them, get involved in acting to act, not to be famous or for the money. Do plays. It’s not worth it if you are just in it for the money. You have to love it.” — Philip Seymour Hoffman

36. “Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” — Oscar Wilde

Acting Quotes

37. “Acting isn’t something you do. Instead of doing it, it occurs. If you’re going to start with logic, you might as well give up. You can have conscious preparation, but you have unconscious results.” — Lee Strasberg

38. “If you have the emotion, it infects you and the audience. If you don’t have it don’t bother; just say your lines as truthfully as you are capable of doing. You can’t fake emotion.” — Sanford Meisner

39. “To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.” — Bette Davis

40. “Accept your lack of knowledge and use it as your asset.” — Natalie Portman

41. “When you do something that people respond to, and then you start altering the blueprint for what worked, it’s pretty fear-inducing. But sometimes, you have to do that, in order to push the boundaries.” — Rami Malek

42. “There is a kind of invisible thread between the actor and the audience, and when it’s there it’s stunning and there is nothing to match that.” — Maggie Smith

43. “If you know you are going to fail, then fail gloriously.” — Cate Blanchett

44. “You can’t learn to act unless you’re criticized. If you tie that criticism to your childhood insecurities you’ll have a terrible time. Instead, you must take criticism objectively, pertaining it only to the work being done.”” — Sanford Meisner

45. “I think the crucial thing about being an actor is to be doing it.” — Chiwetel Ejiofor

46. “Once you are gold, you need to keep yourself golden. Even the best of it needs to be cleaned and re-exposed and put into the world again” — Susan Batson

47. “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

48. “I think that young women and little girls need to see that they don’t have to be the damsel in distress. They don’t have to not show their strength. They don’t have to be whatever the stereotype is or the tropes that we go to in our minds.” — Octavia Spencer

49. “Acting requires faith. You just have to believe that you are the person you’re playing and that what is happening is happening to you.” — Ivana Chubbuck

50. “Life has to be everything. It can’t be all sad. It can’t be all peaches and cream. Because the lows have you appreciate the highs. And the highs give you perspective on the lows. If it’s not everything, it becomes flat or mundane.” —Sterling K Brown