You are not in business to be popular.
~ Kirstie Alley

We become actors without realizing it, and actors without wanting to.
~ Henri Frederic Amiel

The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in their profession that the less socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.
~ W. H. Auden

I don't get acting jobs because of my looks.
~ Alec Baldwin

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.
~ Ellen Barkin

For an actress to be a success, she must have the face of Venus, the brains of a Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of a Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros.
~ Ethel Barrymore

The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn an Event.
~ Roland Barthes

For the theatre one needs long arms; it is better to have them too long than too short. An artiste with short arms can never, never make a fine gesture.
~ Sarah Bernhardt

Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life. The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis.
~ Marlon Brando

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

The hardest part has been maintaining a small head -- remaining down to earth. So many people try to make you more than you are. This business has changed a lot of good people and a lot of good families, and I don't want that to happen to me.
~ Brandy

A man who strains himself on the stage is bound, if he is any good, to strain all the people sitting in the stalls.
~ Bertolt Brecht

One forgets too easily the difference between a man and his image, and that there is none between the sound of his voice on the screen and in real life.
~ Robert Bresson

The actor searches vainly for the sound of a vanished tradition, and critic and audience follow suit. We have lost all sense of ritual and ceremony -- whether it be connected with Christmas, birthdays or funerals -- but the words remain with us and old impulses stir in the marrow. We feel we should have rituals, we should do something about getting them and we blame the artists for not finding them for us. So the artist sometimes attempts to find new rituals with only his imagination as his source: he imitates the outer form of ceremonies, pagan or baroque, unfortunately adding his own trapping -- the result is rarely convincing. And after the years and years of weaker and waterier imitations we now find ourselves rejecting the very notion of a holy stage. It is not the fault of the holy that it has become a middle-class weapon to keep the children good.
~ Peter (Stephen Paul) Brook

From '86 until the summer of last year, wherever I went, people would say, ''You would have made a great James Bond! Weren't you going to be James Bond? You should have been, you could have been, you may have been.'' Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It was like unfinished business in my life. I couldn't say no to it this time around.
~ Pierce Brosnan

When I was a fireman I was in a lot of burning buildings. It was a great job, the only job I ever had that compares with the thrill of acting. Before going into a fire, there's the same surge of adrenaline you get just before the camera rolls.
~ Steve Buscemi

I am acquainted with no immaterial sensuality so delightful as good acting.
~ Lord Byron

First of all, I choose the great [roles], and if none of these come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don't come, I choose the ones that pay the rent.
~ Michael Caine

Such is an actor's life. We must ride the waves of every film, barfing occasionally, yet maintain our dignity, even as the bulk of our Herculean efforts are keel-hauled before our very eyes. [On filming MacHale's Navy]
~ Bruce Campbell

The popularity of that baby-faced boy, who possessed not even the elements of a good actor, was a hallucination in the public mind, and a disgrace to our theatrical history.
~ Thomas Campbell