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Acting

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Movie actors are just ordinary mixed-up people—with agents. ~ Jean Kerr

Acting is an activity in which a story is told by means of its enactment by an actor or actress who adopts a character—in theatre, television, film, radio, video games, or any other medium that makes use of the mimetic mode.

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations · The Dictionary of Legal Quotations · See also · External links

A

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  • I wanted to stop acting. The director was like, 'It looks too real. It looks too painful. Can you be prettier when you cry? Cry pretty, Jessica. Don't do that thing with your face. Just make it flat. We can CGI the tears in.' And I'm like, But there's no connection to a human being. And then it got me thinking: Am I not good enough? Are my instincts and my emotions not good enough? Do people hate them so much that they don't want me to be a person? Am I not allowed to be a person in my work? And so I just said, 'F--k it. I don't care about this business anymore.'

B

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For an actress to be a success she must have the face of Venus, the brains of Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros. ~ Ethel Barrymore
If a studio offered to pay me as much to sweep the floor as it did to act, I'd sweep the floor]. There isn't anything that pays you as well as acting while you decide what the hell you're going to do with yourself. Who cares about the applause? Do I need applause to feel good about myself? ~ Marlon Brando
  • For an actress to be a success she must have the face of Venus, the brains of Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros.
  • It's not whether you really cry. It's whether the audience thinks you are crying.
  • 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.
  • An actor's a guy, who if you ain't talking about him, ain't listening.
    • c, The Observer (1956).
  • Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life. Quitting acting, that's the sign of maturity.
    • Marlon Brando, Halliwell's Filmgoer's and Video Viewer's Companion.
  • The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis.
    • Marlon Brando: The Only Contender, Gary Carey (1985), Ch.13
  • Acting is the least mysterious of all crafts. Whenever we want something from somebody or when we want to hide something or pretend, we're acting. Most people do it all day long.
  • If a studio offered to pay me as much to sweep the floor as it did to act, I'd sweep the floor]. There isn't anything that pays you as well as acting while you decide what the hell you're going to do with yourself. Who cares about the applause? Do I need applause to feel good about myself?
  • The close-up says everything, it's then that an actor's learned, rehearsed behavior becomes most obvious to an audience and chips away, unconsciously, at its experience of reality. In a close-up, the audience is only inches away, and your face becomes the stage.

C

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  • When an actor has money, he doesn't send letters but telegrams.
  • You know, the objective of all of the acting classes really was for you to show how you feel, and not to be clever and not to show all the tricks you could do a lot of people came there with some experience and a lot of times they would bring whatever tricks they had, to be entertaining to the classes. The teachers wanted to strip all those away, and say, "No, could you be emotionally honest onstage?" The first stage of emotional honesty, or at least the resistance to being emotionally honest, is to be angry. When anger doesn't work, you try crying. But those are all just defense mechanisms to shut off how you actually feel about everything. We all build these sort of walls to keep ourselves from showing our true emotions, because they can be seen as weaknesses.

D

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  • The thing about performance, even if it’s only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities.
  • Through studying and through being raised on movie sets, I was surrounded by a lot of people who believed that the more tortured the person, the greater the artist. I always had a hard time understanding that, but thought, "I guess that's the way it is." Luckily, through life and the gift of the acting teacher who's changed my life in so many ways since 1984--her name is Sandra Seacat--I learned there's another opinion, which is: the better the person, the better the artist. The more true you are to who you are and the more honest you are as an individual, the more honest you can be as an actor, and I'm really liking that.
    • Laura Dern in "Profile: Defining Moments" by Jamie Painter Young, in Back Stage West (November 22-28, 2001)
  • The question actors most often get asked is how they can bear saying the same things over and over again night after night, but God knows the answer to that is, don't we all anyway; might as well get paid for it.

F

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Unlike writers or painters, we don't sit down in front of a blank canvas and say, 'How do I start? Where do I start?' We're given the springboard of the text, a plane ticket, told to report to Alabama, and there's a group of people all ready to make a film and it's a marvelous life. ~ Albert Finney
  • Unlike writers or painters, we don't sit down in front of a blank canvas and say, 'How do I start? Where do I start?' We're given the springboard of the text, a plane ticket, told to report to Alabama, and there's a group of people all ready to make a film and it's a marvelous life.
    • Albert Finney, Interview with Paul Fischer at Dark Horizons (2 December 2003).
  • We read the lines so that people can hear and understand them; we move about the stage without bumping into the furniture or each other; and, well that’s it.

G

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  • It was a character that I wanted to play my whole life and not one part of me was indifferent ... but I got incredibly uncomfortable with the attention that just came with that job. It was nothing to do with me, it was to do with this idea of celebrity. Hopefully I’m just more myself as I get older and as I grow, but in our culture they’re telling us to be something totally f--king different.

H

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Actors are cattle. I've always said actors are cattle. In fact, Carole Lombard once built a corral on set and put three live calves into it, in recognition of my feelings. I tell them that, and treat them as such, and we get along fineǃ ~ Alfred Hitchcock
  • If I say this people will think I'm kidding, but I learned so much about acting working with those wolves on White Fang. If I were to run Juilliard right now, I would make them take a class where they worked with animals. Animals don't know how to lie, so you have to just be with them. Whenever you act weird, or seem like you have an agenda, or are worried about what your hair looks like, they leave the set. They're not interested.
  • [S]he'd put a book on a chair and all you did was ask questions about that book: is it a good book or a lousy book? Who made the binding? Why don't I want to read it? Why would I want to read it? How long has it been sitting there? It's a very simple exercise but I do that all the time, constantly question myself and my surroundings, not in a negative way but in a positive way that leads toward my character.
  • There are some actors today full of their own importance. They forget that years ago actors were not even second-class citizens. Back then, long before an actor learned makeup, he learned pickpocketing. It's publicity, and all that has made the actor's economic lot a lot better. And being on television has replaced pickpocketing. But I still don't know why actors have become so confoundedly important or why, for example, anybody would be interested in what I have to say. Who am I? Who are other actors? Especially with so many really important people around with really important things to say. Why aren't teachers and professors as awe-inspiring with the public as actors? What they do is certainly a bigger contribution to the welfare of society than what actors do.
    • Pat Hingle, as quoted in "Actor Doesn't See Why Fans Look Up to Stars" by Ben Kubasik, in Newsday (23 August 1960)
  • [T]he director passed off the phrase as one of his "Machiavellian quips," not to be taken seriously. "Let us say, rather, that actors are a necessary evil," he cautioned, with a straight face. "As a matter of fact, I couldn't work if I weren't on friendly terms with them; I'll bend over backward every time. Besides, I get into each picture I make, if only for a couple of seconds—so I'm probably a frustrated actor at heart myself."
  • It still goes. But Pat is the nicest cattle I've ever seen.
    • Alfred Hitchcock, reaffirming the "actors are cattle" quote while in Boston to see his daughter perform onstage; as quoted in "The Lyons Den" by Leonard Lyons, in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (20 October 1944).
  • The lower lip definitely states that all actors are cattle—including the authorǃ
    • Alfred Hitchcock's handwritten note accompanying sketched self-portrait; as seen in—and addressed to the author of—"Melodrama Maestro" by Hume Cronyn, in McClean's (1 November 1944).
  • Actors are cattle. I've always said actors are cattle. In fact, Carole Lombard once built a corral on set and put three live calves into it, in recognition of my feelings. I tell them that, and treat them as such, and we get along fineǃ
    • Alfred Hitchcock, as quoted in "New York Close-Up" by Tex McCrary and Jinx Falkenburg, in New York Herald Tribune (27 February 1950).
  • I was more intolerant in the days when I said actors were cattle and the director was the herder. Today I prefer to say actors are children and the wise director treats them that way.
  • Then there is a dreadful story that I hate actors. Imagine anyone hating Jimmy Stewart or Jack, last of the Warner Brothers. I cannot imagine how such a rumor began, though it may possibly be because I was once quoted as saying that actors are cattle. My actor friends know that I would never be capable of such a thoughtless, rude and unfeeling remark. What I probably said was that actors should be treated as cattle.
  • How do you know you are an actor? Where does it begin, the desire to use yourself in this mysterious way? That fantasy was only one of many that helped me cope with a chaotic childhood. Is that kind of fantasy the beginning of an actor? Not for every child, certainly, but important it was to me and to my beginnings. For fantasy is what actors do—they pretend, they make believe, they imagine Lies Like Truth, as Harold Clurman titled one of his books. The actor must find a way to make the fantasies given him by the playwright as connected, as important, as necessary to himself as mine were to my ten-year-old self.

I

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J

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  • I told them it was an accident, but you know how superstitious actors are.
    • Matthew Johnson, Public Safety (2007) in Rich Horton (ed.), Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2008, p. 205

K

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What they teach in these acting schools is incredible, hair-raising crap... How can you "teach" someone to be an actor? How can you teach someone how and what to feel and how to express it? ~ Klaus Kinski
  • What they teach in these acting schools is incredible, hair-raising crap. The Actors Studio in America is supposed to be the worst. There the students learn how to be natural - that is, they flop around, pick their noses, scratch their balls. This bullshit is known as "method acting." How can you "teach" someone to be an actor? How can you teach someone how and what to feel and how to express it? How can someone teach me how to laugh or cry? How to be glad and how to be sad? What pain is, or despair or happiness? What poverty and hunger are? What hate and love are? What desire is, and fulfillment? No, I don't want to waste my time with these arrogant morons.
    • Klaus Kinski, Kinski Uncut : The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1996), p. 59.
  • People call me an "actor". What's that? In any case, it has nothing to do with the shit that people have always blabbered about it. It's neither a vocation nor a profession - although it's how I earn my living. But then so does the two-headed freak at the carnival. It's something you have to try and live with - until you learn how to free yourself. It has nothing to do with nonsense like "talent," and it's nothing to be conceited or proud of.
    • Klaus Kinski, Kinski Uncut : The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1996), p. 310.

L

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  • I am persuaded there is no triumph equal to one achieved on the stage—it comes so immediate and so home : you have before you the mass of human beings whose sympathies are at your will; you witness the emotions which you raise, you see the tears which you command : the poet has erected the statue, but it is for you to give it life—the words must find their music on your lips—the generous sentiment, the exalted hope, the touches of deep feeling, ask their expression from you : surely such influence is among the triumphs of the mind, ay and a great and noble triumph.

M

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  • I have turned roles down because they are rapists. It's something I don't even want to watch. If I even click on it on TV, I have to click it off or I'll put my foot through the screen... What you see on that screen is just my terror at having to do that scene.
  • A motion picture must be true to life. If a picture portrays a false emotion it trains people seeing it to react abnormally.
  • By the time an actor knows how to act any sort of part he is often too old to act any but a few.
  • What I want to do is to become the part -- to leave Tomas Milian wherever he is and become the character.
  • Acting is therefore the lowest of the arts, if it is an art at all.

N

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I understand what an actor is. I, too, am an actor. But I’m an actor in a wheelchair, and I never see parts that are leading roles for a person in a wheelchair. And so the one time I see a role where there’s a person in a wheelchair, I think, wow, this could be it. This could be the moment where I have all of the tools necessary to play this part. Do I get a shot at playing it?” And he was like, “Because when you think of it on the flip side, they never call people with wheelchairs in to play able-bodied people, and they’ll get able-bodied people to play people in wheelchairs.” ~ Trevor Noah
  • They wanted to "teach" me to act. But to act is natural. It is ten percent acting and ninety percent being smart.
    • Franco Nero, as quoted in his Blue Underground talent profile.
  • He just wrote a really cogent, beautiful response online. Didn’t fight with anybody, didn’t call anybody anything, didn’t judge anybody. And he completely opened my eyes to a perspective I never thought of. He said, “I understand what an actor is. I, too, am an actor. But I’m an actor in a wheelchair, and I never see parts that are leading roles for a person in a wheelchair. And so the one time I see a role where there’s a person in a wheelchair, I think, wow, this could be it. This could be the moment where I have all of the tools necessary to play this part. Do I get a shot at playing it?” And he was like, “Because when you think of it on the flip side, they never call people with wheelchairs in to play able-bodied people, and they’ll get able-bodied people to play people in wheelchairs.”
    I never thought of it like that. My perspective, obviously, as someone who is not in a wheelchair—I just never thought of it that way. And I sat there and I was like, it’s powerful because you don’t think about representation, you don’t think about how important it is for people to see themselves onscreen in a real way. And at the same time, I don’t think Bryan Cranston did anything wrong. I don’t think everything has to be a fight. It’s just, like, a moment to be like, hey, maybe next time people in Hollywood can look at that and go, maybe you can get a relatively unknown actor to play that role and then put an A-lister opposite them and maybe this becomes their breakout. Maybe this becomes the thing that blows them up.
    And that’s where you realize how powerful representation is, because if you’re a person in a wheelchair, how many movies come along where the lead character is in a wheelchair? There’s virtually none. And even myself, I was like, oh man, I have to try and understand that a little bit more. It was eye-opening.

O

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I used to be under the impression that in some kind of wanky, bullshit way, acting was like therapy: you get in and grapple with and exorcise all those demons inside of you. I don't believe that anymore. It's like a snow shaker. You shake the thing up, but it can't escape the glass. It can't get out. And it will settle until the next time you shake it up. ~ Gary Oldman
  • I knew nothing about the theatre, and so asked the advice of my best friend among the players, Arthur Shields, as to what I should do, and his advice was so extraordinary that I took it as a good joke until I noticed that I was creating chaos in the theatre. "Treat us as though we were children," he said shortly. "Nice children, of course; children that you're fond of, but not as grownups. And for God's sake, whatever you do, don't praise us. That drives us mad." It is the best advice that was ever given to a man of the theatre, if only he would be intelligent enough to appreciate it. I wasn't; not for a long time. Arthur never made a great reputation as an actor; he was far too discerning for that; and it was only when I had almost wrecked the company that I realized how discerning he was.
  • I used to be under the impression that in some kind of wanky, bullshit way, acting was like therapy: you get in and grapple with and exorcise all those demons inside of you. I don't believe that anymore. It's like a snow shaker. You shake the thing up, but it can't escape the glass. It can't get out. And it will settle until the next time you shake it up.
  • Acting is illusion, as much illusion as magic is — and not so much a matter of being real. I mean, I would probably shock Lee Strasberg.
    • Laurence Olivier, as quoted in Famous Actors and Actresses on the American Stage (1975) by William C. Young, p. 885
  • If I wasn't an actor, I think I'd have gone mad. You have to have extra voltage, some extra temperament to reach certain heights. Art is a little bit larger than life — it's an exhalation of life and I think you probably need a little touch of madness.
    • Laurence Olivier, as quoted in Laurence Olivier (1979) by Foster Hirsch, p. 166

P

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I always tell myself that when you’re playing a character, pretend like they’re on trial and you’re giving the best witness of their life. You really need to think about every element of the character and represent them properly, as if they were a real person. You want to give 100 percent of what they’re worth and what they deserve as people. ~ Pauley Perrette
  • When you’re doing voice work, and I said it right when I came in the door, I said, ‘I’m very obedient, and I will take direction.” Because the people who have written this, and the ones who have been envisioning the animation in their head, they have such a specific concept on what they want, that it’s good for me to say, “Give it to me. Give me every piece of direction you want. I’ll do it 10 different ways. Whatever you want.” It’s their vision, and I want to achieve that. If I get an idea while I’m doing a voice, I will offer it … “Hey, can we try this?” But it’s still up to them.
  • I always tell myself that when you’re playing a character, pretend like they’re on trial and you’re giving the best witness of their life. You really need to think about every element of the character and represent them properly, as if they were a real person. You want to give 100 percent of what they’re worth and what they deserve as people.
  • I would never say Don't try it to people, but in my seminars Ill play demo CDs of actors with whom I work; they don't get as much work as I do but are every bit as talented. They have agents, they're members of the Screen Actors Guild and they cant get a job. The point I'm trying to make to these folks is, you need to know that there are people that they've never heard of who are really good and are going to get the call before you do. They've already got representation and have been here for five or 10 years.
    People aren't aware of how much competition there is; there are things I never even get a shot at and I've won an Emmy. I've done a couple 1,000 half-hours of work on a couple of 100 series and I still have to audition and still don't get everything I read for. That's the two big things: Knowing there's a lot of competition and realizing that its not all just a matter of doing funny voices. Its also acting, the ability to sing and improvise in your characters.
  • Sandra believes that every part you play is really part of you, a way for you to work out something in your past, something in your present. Since then, whenever I've chosen to do something, I've thought, "well, this has nothing to do with me." Then, sure enough, once I get into it and really start doing the work, and really start uncovering, I see that it's absolutely about something that's going on in my life. It isn't something obvious. It's usually pretty hidden. But there's always some sort of parallel to what's going on in my own life. And so, perhaps you can use it to bring closure, as a healing, a reconnection. I believe in that. I believe in that.
  • If I went to see Berma in a new play, it would not be easy for me to assess her art and her diction, since I should not be able to differentiate between a text which was not already familiar and what she added to it by her intonations and gestures, an addition which would seem to me to be embodied in the play itself; whereas the old plays, the classics which I knew by heart, presented themselves to me as vast and empty walls, reserved and made ready for my inspection, on which I should be able to appreciate without restriction the devices by which Berma would cover them, as with frescoes, with the perpetually fresh treasures of her inspiration.
    • Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, C. Moncrieff, trans. (1982), p. 476.

R

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  • In music, the punctuation is absolutely strict, the bars and rests are absolutely defined. But our punctuation cannot be quite strict, because we have to relate it to the audience. In other words we are continually changing the score.
  • The art of acting consists in keeping people from coughing.

S

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What goes on between an actor and the audience, at its best, is a dialogue. Sometimes you watch an actor on stage and somehow the performance isn’t getting through. The fourth wall is not only closed, it’s soundproofed. That’s because the actor isn’t connecting with the living and breathing human beings in the room with him. The audience feels the distance and they react accordingly. As an actor, you have to fire up your sensors at 100 percent all the time. You have to be in touch with all those heartbeats in the audience, connect with them. Sometimes during the Grinch performances, a child will shout out something. And I’ll turn right around, look them in the eye and respond to them. ~ Stefán Karl Stefánsson
  • What goes on between an actor and the audience, at its best, is a dialogue. Sometimes you watch an actor on stage and somehow the performance isn’t getting through. The fourth wall is not only closed, it’s soundproofed. That’s because the actor isn’t connecting with the living and breathing human beings in the room with him. The audience feels the distance and they react accordingly. As an actor, you have to fire up your sensors at 100 percent all the time. You have to be in touch with all those heartbeats in the audience, connect with them. Sometimes during the Grinch performances, a child will shout out something. And I’ll turn right around, look them in the eye and respond to them.

T

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  • Every now and then, when you're onstage, you hear the best sound a player can hear. It's a sound you can't get in movies or in television. It is the sound of a wonderful, deep silence that means you've hit them where they live.

U

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V

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Being an actor is a matter of choice that above all takes place at an existential level: either you express the conservative structures of society and are nothing more that a tool in the hands of power, or you address the progressive components of this society in an attempt to settle a revolutionary relation between art and life. ~ Gian Maria Volonté
  • I accept or reject a film based on my conception of cinema. The definition of political cinema is one I don't agree with, because every film, every show, is typically political in nature. Political cinema is simply the brainchild of bad journalists. I try to make films that say something about the mechanisms of a society like ours, which correspond with some research of a shred of truth. For me, there is a need to understand the cinema as a means of mass communication, as well as the theater and television. Being an actor is a matter of choice that above all takes place at an existential level: either you express the conservative structures of society and are nothing more that a tool in the hands of power, or you address the progressive components of this society in an attempt to settle a revolutionary relation between art and life.
    • Gian Maria Volonté, in Un attore contro: Gian Maria Volonté - I film e le testimonianze (1984).

W

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I think my dream movie is to take, Clint Eastwood, Julie Christie, Vanessa Red gave a bunch of– Meryl Streep and take them all and put them in like a teen comedy. Because — because now we can do that. It would be the most expensive team comedy ever made but totally worth it. I want to see that movie. but what I really, realized last night while watching just performance as Clu was no matter what effect they come up with to be able to make actors seem younger, older it’s still driven by the actor. And the effects are extraordinary and Eric Barba’s team is incredible but Jeff was driving that rig and adjusts performance as to what makes that character so compelling. And it was sort of a relief to know will actors will still be needed no matter what they come up with . Even if we’re stuck in a booth somewhere hidden away they’ll still need actors to drive these things and make them interesting. And I just thought that’s an incredibly difficult thing to edit such an artform in itself and one that’s new and unprecedented. So the fact that Jeff just brought an incredible amount of Jeff to that character is even more extraordinary knowing all the effects and all the extra work that went into it.

  • An actor entering through the door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you've got a situation.
    • Billy Wilder, as quoted in The Bright Side of Billy Wilder, Primarily (1970) by Tom Wood, p. 20.
  • I think that people don’t realize how challenging that voice work can be. Because when we invite them into the booth, we will be asking them to do multiple scenes. And so we will be asking them to go from one emotion, to another, to another very quickly, and they have to be very nimble. And they don��t have the benefit of a costume, or a set, or even another actor to bounce off of, they have to conjure all of it up. And because we work in animation, it is very physical often times: it’s you’re crashing through a window or you’re on a motorcycle or you’re in a room by yourself or you’re in a room with ten people, they have to imagine that while they are doing it, and I am always so impressed by the guys that can do it, and we do ask them to do long sessions. And the stamina is also something I am very impressed by.

Y

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Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 4-6.
  • Farce follow'd Comedy, and reach'd her prime,
    In ever-laughing Foote's fantastic time;
    Mad wag! who pardon'd none, nor spared the best,
    And turn'd some very serious things to jest.
    Nor church nor state escaped his public sneers,
    Arms nor the gown, priests, lawyers, volunteers;
    "Alas, poor Yorick!" now forever mute!
    Whoever loves a laugh must sigh for Foote.
    We smile, perforce, when histrionic scenes
    Ape the swoln dialogue of kings and queens,
    When "Chrononhotonthologos must die,"
    And Arthur struts in mimic majesty.
  • As good as a play.
    • Saying ascribed to Charles II, while listening to a debate on Lord Ross's Divorce Bill.
  • But as for all the rest,
    There's hardly one (I may say none) who stands the Artist's test.
    The Artist is a rare, rare breed. There were but two, forsooth,
    In all me time (the stage's prime!) and The Other One was Booth.
  • I think I love and reverence all arts equally, only putting my own just above the others; because in it I recognize the union and culmination of my own. To me it seems as if when God conceived the world, that was Poetry; He formed it, and that was Sculpture; He colored it, and that was Painting; He peopled it with living beings, and that was the grand, divine, eternal Drama.
  • See, how these rascals use me! They will not let my play run; and yet they steal my thunder.
    • John Dennis, see Biographia Britannica, Volume V, p. 103.
  • Like hungry guests, a sitting audience looks:
    Plays are like suppers; poets are the cooks.
    The founder's you: the table is this place:
    The carvers we: the prologue is the grace.
    Each act, a course, each scene, a different dish,
    Though we're in Lent. I doubt you're still for flesh.
    Satire's the sauce, high-season'd, sharp and rough.
    Kind masks and beaux, I hope you're pepper-proof?
    Wit is the wine; but 'tis so scarce the true
    Poets, like vintners, balderdash and brew.
    Your surly scenes, where rant and bloodshed join.
    Are butcher's meat, a battle's sirloin:
    Your scenes of love, so flowing, soft and chaste,
    Are water-gruel without salt or taste.
  • Prologues precede the piece in mournful verse,
    As undertakers walk before the hearse.
  • Prologues like compliments are loss of time;
    'Tis penning bows and making legs in rhyme.
  • On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting,'Twas only that when he was off, he was acting.
  • Everybody has his own theatre, in which he is manager, actor, prompter, playwright, sceneshifter, boxkeeper, doorkeeper, all in one, and audience into the bargain.
  • It's very hard! Oh, Dick, my boy,
    It's very hard one can't enjoy
    A little private spouting;
    But sure as Lear or Hamlet lives,
    Up comes our master, Bounce! and gives
    The tragic Muse a routing.
  • And Tragedy should blush as much to stoop
    To the low mimic follies of a farce,
    As a grave matron would to dance with girls.
    • Horace, Of the Art of Poetry, line 272. Wentworth Dillon's translation.
  • The drama's laws, the drama's patrons give.
    For we that live to please, must please to live.
    • Samuel Johnson, Prologue. Spoken by Mr. Garrick on Opening Drury Lane Theatre. (1747) line 53.
  • Who teach the mind its proper face to scan,
    And hold the faithful mirror up to man.
  • A long, exact, and serious comedy;
    In every scene some moral let it teach,
    And, if it can, at once both please and preach.
    • Alexander Pope, Epistle to Miss Blount, with the Works of Voiture, line 22.
  • This is the Jew that Shakespeare drew.
    • Attributed to Alexander Pope when Macklin was performing the character of Shylock, Feb. 14, 1741.
  • There still remains to mortify a wit
    The many-headed monster of the pit.
  • To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
    To raise the genius, and to mend the heart;
    To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold,
    Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold—
    For this the tragic Muse first trod the stage.
  • Your scene precariously subsists too long,
    On French translation and Italian song.
    Dare to have sense yourselves; assert the stage;
    Be justly warm'd with your own native rage.
  • Tom Goodwin was an actor-man,
    Old Drury's pride and boast,
    In all the light and spritely parts,
    Especially the ghost.
  • The play bill which is said to have announced the tragedy of Hamlet, the character of the Prince of Denmark being left out.
  • (The) play of limbs succeeds the play of wit.
  • Lo, where the Stage, the poor, degraded Stage,
    Holds its warped mirror to a gaping age!
  • The play is done; the curtain drops,
    Slow falling to the prompter's bell:
    A moment yet the actor stops,
    And looks around, to say farewell.
    It is an irksome word and task:
    And, when he's laughed and said his say,
    He shows, as he removes the mask,
    A face that's anything but gay.
  • In other things the knowing artist may
    Judge better than the people; but a play,
    (Made for delight, and for no other use)
    If you approve it not, has no excuse.

See also

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Wikipedia
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Wiktionary
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Look up acting in Wiktionary, the free dictionary
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