actor quotes

An actor is a kind of guy who if you ain't talking about him ain't listening.

- Marlon Brando
Quoted in Bob Thomas Brando (1973), ch.8.

Every actor has a natural animosity toward every other actor, present or absent, living or dead.

- Louise Brooks
  Lulu in Hollywood.

The better the actor the more stupid he is.

-Truman Capote
Attributed.

David, you are an actor everywhere but upon the stage.

- Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Attributed, in conversation with the actor David Garrick.

The difference between Beethoven and Mahler is the difference betweenwatching a great manwalkdownthe street and watching a great actor act the part of a great man walking down the street.

- Aaron Copland
Quoted in the Wall Street Journal, 9  Jun1995.

Inside this Hollywood playboy is a someway decent actor waiting for a chance to prove it. But, since Hollywood will never give me that chance, I drink to

- Dario Fo
controversial plays  and revues  deal with political  themes.  His plays   include  Accidental   Death   of   an   Anarchist   (1970)   and Trumpets  and  Raspberries  (1984).  He  was  awarded  the  Nobel prize for literature in1997.

Daniel Day Lewis has what every actor in Hollywood wants: talent. And what everyactor in England wants: looks.

- Andre   Paul Guillaume Gide
  In The Independent,13 May.

Mr Kemblesacrificestoomuchto decorum.He ischiefly afraid of being contaminated by too close an identity with the character herepresents.This isthegreatest vice in an actor, who ought never to bilk his part.

-William Hazlitt
  Of  John Philip Kemble's performance as Sir Giles Overreach in Massinger's  A New Way to Pay Old Debts. In The Examiner, 5 May.

I can't be absolutely certain, 30 years ago when I made the decision to become anactor, but certainlyone of the reasons was it was the way to meet other queer men.

- Sir Ian Murray McKellen
Quoted in Blake Green'A Kingly McKellen as a Fascist in Richard II ', in the Pink Pages, San Francisco Chronicle,16  Aug1992.

Actually, I am a golfer. That is my real occupation. I never was an actor; ask anybody, particularly the critics.

-Victor Mature
Attributed.

A third-rate political wheel-horse, with the face of a moving-picture actor, the intelligence of a respectable agricultural implement dealer, and the imagination of a lodge joiner†a benign blanka decent, harmless, laborious, hollow-headed mediocrity.

- H(enry) L(ouis) Mencken
Of President  Warren G Harding. Quoted in Fred Hobson Mencken:  A Life (1994).

It is a great help for a man to be in love with himself. For an actor, it is absolutely essential.

- Robert Morley
  In Playboy.

There'sno suchthing as anactor giving positive criticism to a director. The minute you say 'Don't you think it would look nicer†', that director's going to hate your guts.Particularly if it's a good idea.

- Peter Mullan
  In a question and answer session at the National Film Theatre, London, 4 Nov.

Make up your mind dearheart.Do you want to be a great actor or a household word?

- Laurence Kerr, Baron Olivier
c.1962  Comment to Richard Burton while filming Cleopatra. Burton replied'Both'.

What is the main problem of the actor? It is to keep the audience awake, and not let them go to sleep, then wake up and go home feeling they've wasted their money.

- Laurence Kerr, Baron Olivier
Attributed.

The trouble with me is, I always have to read that stuff by myself. If an actor reads it out, I hardly listen. I keep worrying about whether he's going to do something phoney every minute.

-J(erome) D(avid) Salinger
  Of Hamlet.The Catcher in the Rye, ch.16.

Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull.

- Rod Sterling
  InVogue,1 Apr. US  architect  and  writer,  author  of  New  Directions  in  American Architecture  (1969,  revised 1977)  and The  House  that  Bob  Built (1991).

Wondrously clean, but as evidently an actor as Garrick.

- Horace, 4th Earl of Orford Walpole
  Of the Methodist preacherJohnWesley. Letter to John Chute,10 Oct. InWilliam Hadley (ed) The Letters of Horace Walpole (1926).

Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that's printed about him.

- (George) Orson Welles
Attributed.

A newspaperman, whose sweetheart ran away with an actor.

-Walter Winchell
Defining a drama critic. Attributed.