Actors on Acting


"If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable. [You must] reach the emotional and intellectual level of ability where you can go out stark naked, emotionally, in front of an audience."

-- Jack Lemon


"For me acting is doing."
-- Pierce Brosnon


"Acting is a way of making yourself exist."
-- Stephen Rea


"I like to say that I didn't choose acting-acting chose me."
-- Ving Rhames


"What's interesting about the process of acting is how often you don't know what you're doing."
-- Alan Rickman


"An actor is totally vulnerable. His total personality is exposed to critical judgment - his intellect, his bearing, his diction, his whole appearance. In short, his ego."
-- Alec Guinness


"Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience."
-- Paul Newman


"If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet...maybe we could understand something."
-- Federico Fellini


"When you stand on the stage you must have a sense that you are addressing the whole world, and that what you say is so important the whole world must listen."
-- Stella Adler


"Acting is not being emotional, but being able to fully express emotion."
-- Kate Reid


"Feelings are like a timid animal -- if you approach them, they'll run away. Let them come to you."
-- Michael Howard


"Acting is a spiritual quest to touch human beings."
-- Larry Moss


"When [actors] are talking, they are servants of the dramatist. It is what they can show the audience when they are not talking that reveals the very fine actor."
-- Cedric Hardwicke


Acting is doing, because everything you say or do is some kind of an action, some kind of a verb. You're always connected to the other person through some kind of action.
--Mira Sorvino