Okay. So for the first time, I put my journalism ambitions on hold and post something for my own leisure. This is a selection of quotes from actors over the years. Some are about the craft, some about the biz, some you may agree with, some you won’t, but I hope you like them. Most of which are from IMDB:
“What distinguishes the real actor from the pseudo is the passionate desire to know what is going on in the hearts and minds of people.”
-Beulah Bondi
“Nobody becomes an actor because they had a good childhood.”
– William H. Macy
“I’m not the Stanislavski kind of actor. I feel I have to communicate with the people in my scene.”
-Tom Cruise
“Method actors take a picture. Real actors paint a portrait.”
-Charles Loughton
“I like to play parts that are not at all like myself. I’m not the least bit exciting.”
-Mildred Dunnock
“If I was going to be broke I decided I might as well be with actors as anyone else. They were cheerful idiots and seemed to take it better.”
-Peter Finch
“I’ve never tried to learn the art of acting. I have been in the business for years but I still can’t tell what acting is or how it’s done.”
-Paul Muni
“I remember someone once said that the whole thing is to keep working and pretty soon they’ll think you’re good.”
-Jack Nicholson
“Study your craft and know who you are and what’s special about you. Find out what everyone does on a film set, ask questions and listen. Make sure you live life, which means don’t do things where you court celebrity, and give something positive back to our society.”
-Paul Newman
“An actor is an interpreter of other men’s words, often a soul which wishes to reveal itself to the world but dare not, a craftsman, a bag of tricks, a vanity bag, a cool observer of mankind, a child and 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
“An actor must interpret life and, in order to do so, must be willing to accept all the experiences life has to offer. In fact, he must seek out more of life than life puts at his feet. In the short span of his lifetime, an actor must learn all there is to know, experience all there is to experience, or approach that state as closely as possible. He must be superhuman in his efforts to store away in the core of his subconscious everything that he might be called upon to use in the expression of his art.”
-James Dean
“We’re all unique as actors. To yourself, you are unique, you have to think ‘I’m me, I’m not going to bunch myself with other people.’ Agents and producers have to get you into a box, to accommodate their limited imaginations.”
-Imelda Staunton
Jon The Blogcentric 