Theater Quotes

Actors and Crew on Twitter have been posting a small army of theater and actor quotes. I decided to collect them :)

"The word 'theatre' is Greek. It means the seeing place. It is where people come to see the truth about life." - Stella Adler

"It's one of the tragic ironies of theatre that only one man in it can count on steady work - the night watchman." Tallulah Bankhead

"Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life." Bette Davis

"With any part you play, there is a certain amount of yourself in it...otherwise it's just not acting. It's lying." Johnny Depp [i've used this one before :)]

"Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul." - Marilyn Monroe

"In Hollywood, a marriage is a success if it outlasts milk." Rita Rudner

"The real violence in Hollywood isn't what's on the screen. It's what you have to do to raise the money." - David Mamet

"Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you'll find the real tinsel underneath." - Oscar Levant

"Quality survives." - Leonard Maltin

"I had to go grassroots, start at the bottom and go on 150 auditions before someone finally gave me a shot." - Donnie Wahlberg

"The more auditions you go on, the more you will learn not to take it personally." - Paula Abdul

"If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative." - Woody Allen

"Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second." - Jean-Luc Godard

"Work in the theater sharpened my verse and my cinema." - James Broughton

"Drama is life with the dull bits cut out." - Alfred Hitchcock

"Anybody can direct, but there are only eleven good writers." - Mel Brooks

"Well, a lot of politics is communicating with people, and obviously comedy has something to do with that." - SENATOR Al Franken :)

"An ounce of performance is worth pounds of promises." - Mae West

"Brevity is the soul of wit." Wm. Shakespeare

"An actor is a poet who writes on the sand." - Antoine Vitez

"I always wanted to be somebody, but I now I realize I should have been more specific." - Lily Tomlin

"The harder I work, the luckier I get." - Samuel Goldwyn

"The object of art is to give life a shape." - Wm Shakespeare

"I don't take the movies seriously, and anyone who does is in for a headache." - Bette Davis

"Filmmaking is not about the tiny details. It's about the big picture." - Ed Wood

"Watching television is like taking black spray paint to your third eye." - Bill Hicks

Why should people go out to see bad films when they can stay at home and see bad television for nothing?" - Samuel Goldwyn

"Comedy always works best when it is mean-spirited." - John Cleese

"Acting is a delicate balance between being Visibly Entertaining and Entertainingly Visible" - Alle 2009

"There's no business like show business, but there are several businesses like accounting." - David Letterman

"If you look around at the people in show business today they are basically the people who didn't give up." - Brent Spiner

"I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you're an idiot." - Steve Martin

"New York's like a boxing match. In Hollywood, it's like a Fellini movie or something." - John Cusack

"In Hollywood...you should always forgive your enemies: you never know when you'll have to work with them." - Lana Turner

"To grasp the full significance of life is the actor's duty; to interpret it his problem; and to express it his dedication." - James Dean

"The term 'serious actor' is kind of an oxymoron, isn't it? Like 'Republican party' or 'airplane food.' - Johnny Depp

"An actor shouldn't undergo psychoanalysis, because there are a lot of things you're better off not knowing." - Paul Lynde

"All I want to see from an actor is the intensity and accuracy of their listening." - Alan Rickman

"Casting is 65 percent of directing." - John Frankenheimer

I don't deserve this award, but I have arthritis and I don't deserve that either." -Jack Benny

"I think the way it works is that when you're casting a movie, you usually want to work with people that you believe in." - Owen Wilson

"A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet." - Orson Welles

"Everyone told me to pass on Speed because it was a 'bus movie.'" - Sandra Bullock

"In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director." - Alfred Hitchcock

"The secret to film is that it's an illusion." - George Lucas

In Beverly Hills... they don't throw their garbage away. They make it into television shows." - Woody Allen

"Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation." -Bette Davis

"Comedy is underrepresented in every actor's life, because it's so bloody difficult to write." - Michael Caine

"Jackie Gleason said that comedy is the most exacting form of dramatic art, because it has an instant critic: laughter." - Chuck Jones

"I always claim that the writer has done 90 percent of the director's work." - Harold Ramis

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh." - Carl Reiner

"My education was doing good plays and also stinkers. When you do a stinker, you learn how to act." - Jeffrey Tambor

"Hollywood is an extraordinary kind of temporary place." - John Schlesinger

Usually, the stuff that's your best idea or work is going to be attacked the most." - Francis Ford Coppola

"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." - Will Rogers

"Money and success don't change people; they merely amplify what is already there." - Will Smith

"Showing off is the fool's idea of glory." - Bruce Lee

"There are only two ways up the ladder. Rung by rung or claw your way to the top. It's been tough on my nails." - Jack Nicholson

In Hollywood, an equitable divorce settlement means each party getting fifty percent of the publicity." - Lauren Bacall

"Wit is educated insolence." - Aristotle

'Hollywood is a cruel and shallow money trench where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.' - Hunter S. Thompson

"I learned a long time ago in Hollywood that the only person I should vote for is myself." - Jack Nicholson

"Hollywood is a sewer with service from the Ritz Carlton." - Wilson Mizner

"Life's like a play: it's not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters." - Seneca

"Acting has to do with saying it as if you meant it, so for me the words are always very important." - Christopher Walken

"Acting isn't really a creative profession. It's an interpretative one." - Paul Newman

"Success in show business depends on your ability to make and keep friends." - Sophie Tucker

"The key to acting is the reality of the doing." -Brent Noel

"Every crowd has a silver lining." - P. T. Barnum

"Politics is the entertainment branch of industry." - Frank Zappa

"Pain is temporary, film is forever." - Michael J. Fox

"Who's ever going to write a film in which I get the girl? Me!" - John Cleese

"On film you put all your energies into a single glance." - Alan Rickman

"Great art direction is NOT the same thing as great film direction!" - Gene Wilder

"One longs for a director with a sense of imagination." - Alan Rickman

"Age is not important unless you're a cheese." Helen Hayes

"I just play him as myself, I don't ease myself into any role really. I stick a beard on and play me." - Michael Gambon

"I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost - it's there and then it's gone." - Maggie Smith

You just have to keep on doing what you do. It's the lesson I get from my husband; he says 'start by starting'." - Meryl Streep

"Acting has to do with discovering character through your own experience, and we're all different." - Ian Mckellen

"Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself." - Charlie Chaplin

"I don't act, anyway... my pictures are made without script or written directions of any kind." - Buster Keaton

Flesh sells. People don't want to see pictures of churches. They want to see naked bodies." - Hellen Mirren


Jasmine P.