Top 100 Best Acting Quotes
#1. Groucho Marx, in his later days, gave me the best review I've ever had and probably will ever have. I changed a light bulb over his bed, and when I came off of his bed with the used one after putting the new one in, Groucho said, 'That's the best acting I've ever seen you do.'
Elliott Gould
#2. We made one film called Thy Neighbor's Wife in which I got flogged at the public whipping post for adultery. I did my best acting in that film, I guess.
Cleo Moore
#3. The really best acting is children in a playground or in a backyard. They're just lost in their imagination. The backyard isn't a pirate ship or a jungle, in the same way that the soundstage isn't Shambala.
Nolan North
#4. I was changing a light bulb over Groucho Marx's bed, so I took my shoes off, got on his bed and changed the bulb. When I got off the bed he said: 'That's the best acting you've ever done.'
Elliott Gould
#5. The Marine Corps is some of the best acting training you could have. Having that responsibility for people's lives, suddenly time becomes a really valuable commodity and you want to make the most of it. And for acting, you just have to do the work, just keep doing it.
Adam Driver
#6. I was a student of Stella Adler and then later Lee Strasberg, and they were into sensory work. At its best, acting is not about words - even when the words are important.
Mark Margolis
#7. People were confused by me, and at first I was auditioning a lot for the crazy characters or the victim, someone who'd been attacked. Which is great, because usually those are the best acting roles.
Jessica Chastain
#8. Speaking of Oscars, I would win overwhelmingly if the Academy gave an Oscar for faking orgasms. I have done some of my best acting convincing my partners I was in the throes of ecstasy.
Marilyn Monroe
#9. The best acting happens when you're not acting. You have to believe what's happening, feel it - even if it's just for a little while. So I'm going to run a club, the best damn club I can, and whatever comes of that is -
Kit Rocha
#10. A lot of the best acting training I had was in junior high and high school. We had very demanding directors and did real plays. You put our plays up against any theater troupe of any age, and they usually did pretty damn well.
Jello Biafra
#11. Once, Naseeruddin Shah told me that the wafer shop was the best acting school that I could have attended. And I completely agree. I observed every customer very minutely and picked up some quirk or the other. Later, I used those experiences while playing different characters.
Boman Irani
#12. There's a large chunk of me in all the parts. As an actor, I got involved largely because I want to let things out. The best acting is that that is most real and the only way to do that, is to genuinely feel it.
James Franco
#13. I think the best acting is when you allow yourself to be kind of vulnerable in the moment.
Michael Sheen
#14. It's bad writing, however naturalistic it's written, that's where you have to do your best acting.
Adam Brody
#15. The best acting is instinctive. It's not intellectual, it's not mechanical, it's instinctive.
Craig MacDonald
#16. Obviously there are times with acting when exactly what is required is just going through the motions, and when doing nothing is the best thing. But at other times, you have to make that leap beyond the immediate environment of people putting up lights on the set.
Christian Bale
#17. Probably the most fun I've ever had, actually, acting. Because it was the perfect extension of the stuff that I'd started to do on Late Night With David Letterman, and when I look back on all my work, it was probably the best possible incarnation of Chris Elliott, of me.
Chris Elliott
#18. Ultimately, everyone is acting out of what they feel is the best choice. In a way, they're all trying to improve the world. And I think that those basic choices make the world a better place.
Chuck Palahniuk
#19. With modeling, you pose. You want to look your best all the time. With acting, you have to be aware of the camera, but the more you show your imperfections, the better you're going to be.
Diane Kruger
#20. It's a blessing and a curse. But it's not always the best situation to be in. As a profession, I don't recommend acting at all.
Armand Assante
#21. I went from sort of trying to get work to all of a sudden being signed up for the next few years on something, and something of this scale with some of the best people in the business involved, acting and directing. It was a dream.
Chris Hemsworth
#22. I'm eternally grateful for the fact that I'm doing what I like best. I thank my stars for it. I wonder why I wasted all that time being fat. I should have lost weight and started acting earlier. But as they say, things happen when they are meant to.
Sonakshi Sinha
#23. Somebody told me long ago that in acting, it's okay to steal, just steal from the best.
Nathan Fillion
#24. I used to wait tables at Gladstone's, a seafood restaurant, day in and day out. I made some of my best friends there. I taught dance and acting lessons to kids. It was awesome - an outreach program, Voices Unheard. I was a messenger for a couple of months.
Sufe Bradshaw
#25. Always obey your parents. When they are present. This is the best policy in the long run. Because if you don't, they will make you. Most parents think they know better than you do, and you can generally make more by humoring that superstition than you can by acting on your own better judgment.
Mark Twain
#26. I think acting is about forgetting yourself in order to give the best of yourself. It's passing through you more than you're creating it. You're not the flower, but the vase which holds the flower.
Juliette Binoche
#28. There was a universe inside every human being every bit as big as the universe outside them. Books were the best way Nina knew - apart from, sometimes, music - to breach the barrier, to connect the internal universe with the external, the words acting merely as a conduit between the two worlds.
Jenny Colgan
#29. My background is really being a writer's actor - that seems to be the way I work best, bringing out the best of writing. There's a whole range of acting skills, and some people can be astonishing with very poor material. That's not me; my skill is essentially unlocking the writing.
Lindsay Duncan
#30. I was trying to be the best rapper in the world. I wasn't thinking about acting.
Ice Cube
#32. Instead of promoting healthy development, they unconsciously undermine it, often with the belief that they are acting in their child's best interest.
Susan Forward
#33. Acting still rings my bell as much as it did in high school. Plus, I can now indulge my interests as a producer as well. My work is more fun than fun but, best of all, it's still very scary. You are always walking some kind of high wire.
Tom Hanks
#34. The weird thing about acting is you're the most competent when you're at your best, but you have to be validated.
Max Minghella
#35. Moral virtue is the quality of acting in the best way in relation to pleasures and pains, and that vice is the opposite.
Aristotle.
#36. I can't say what my greatest strength between acting and singing is ... I'll leave that to the critics. Maybe my best strength is performance itself, being with the audience and feeling what they feel, bouncing off of them.
Erica Schroeder
#37. If you play it safe every time, then you're missing the best part of acting. You haven't learned anything about your humanity.
Brit Marling
#38. You're your first best audience, long before anybody else hears you. So don't be an easy audience. Keep asking for more.
Michael Caine
#39. The best actors are children and dogs because they're not acting at all." - Helen Mirren
Judith Weston
#40. My best advice to actors is if you love acting, do it every chance you get. Success does not mean success. All that matters is whether or not you're doing your best to entertain. The way this business works is all about luck and timing.
Matthew Gray Gubler
#41. I was on a show called 'SliDE' when I graduated from college, and then that set the premise of my love for acting. It was so much fun. I was on set with my best friends every day. From that, I got 'Home and Away' and it was such a relaxed, friendly environment. Everyone's so kind and supportive.
Brenton Thwaites
#42. I made the best business decision at 14 when I decided to get into acting. The worst was owning 2 homes at the same time.
Tamala Jones
#43. It's whether they have a vision and whether they're able to communicate it. The best director is just someone who gets over-excited about doing it - they don't even have to know much about camera or acting.
Colin Firth
#44. In my opinion, animation is best when it communicates without words, because it is the perfect medium through which to make shortcuts to meaning. When actors are not talking, just acting out, it looks kind of weird. But in animation, mime is constant, and you accept it.
Signe Baumane
#45. Find in yourself those human things which are universal.
Sanford Meisner
#46. I was born in the '60s and grew up in the '70s - not exactly the best decade for food in British history. It was horrendous. It was a time when, as a nation, we excelled in art and music and acting and photography and fashion - all creative skills ... all apart from cooking.
Heston Blumenthal
#47. In acting, you are fulfilled if you give justice to your role ... if you are able to do a credible performance and touch the audience. Same with directing. If you are able to draw out the best from your actors, then you fulfill your job as a director.
Timothy Hutton
#48. Sometimes my mistake has been hesitancy about acting on the decisions I've made. When's the best time to invest? It's today, not tomorrow.
Charles Schwab
#49. It's sort of scary to work with your parents when you're in the same business. But there was something so very safe about that. Acting with her was just like working with a wonderful actress who just happens to be my best friend and also my mother.
Lily Rabe
#50. That fundamentally undermines your ability to access the best part of your instincts. So my advice to those people would be stop thinking and introspecting so much and do a little more acting.
Malcolm Gladwell
#51. It's hard to talk about acting because I don't think it's quite as explicit as a lot of people might think. And that's probably the best thing about it.
Paul Dano
#52. Fishing is very meditative; you need to be able to give up control and cast out the line and then hope for the best, so in that way, it's quite like acting.
Laura Donnelly
#53. I don't think many actors are the best judge of careers. I think generally we have good instincts about what we can do in terms of acting. And often they become directors, which I don't want to be.
Hugh Jackman
#54. I thought I'd be a journalist, and only pursued acting intermittently while studying. My very first interview as a journalist was with David Usher of Moist, and he called the magazine the next day to say it was the best interview he'd done for his solo album. I felt like a million euros.
Liane Balaban
#55. I don't have the desire to be the best standup in the UK but I do have the desire to be the best at everything else I do in terms of writing and acting.
Doc Brown
#56. Maybe it's a cultural thing, being Korean, but my first reflex has always been to exude humility - but it doesn't help you in acting. For acting, humility isn't the best thing. It'll weaken your work.
Steven Yeun
#57. Daniel Day-Lewis and Sean Penn to me are the two best actors of all time. I'm just glad to have the pleasure to be in an era that they're acting while I'm acting. They're probably the best actors in my mind.
Channing Tatum
#58. Movies are hard to make, and you have to work toward a common ethic and do your best. You don't want to work with people who don't care or who are acting out some neurotic, crazy thesis on the set.
Robert De Niro
#59. I think the best advice I ever got about acting was from my dad, which was, 'If they don't buy the fish on the first toss, throw it back in the wagon and go to the second house.' Which is like an old Jewish fishmongers' story about how you become a successful fish monger.
Lin Shaye
#60. I think the best roles are in dark movies. It's roles that aren't you. It's fun playing someone that's not me. If I'm playing me all the time, then it's not acting. It's just being yourself.
Chloe Grace Moretz
#61. Secrets are great for acting. Secrets are the best thing in the world for acting, because they keep you looking like you have something in the back of your mind.
Alison Pill
#62. The owner of Papa John's may not be the best pitchman, but he's the worst at acting. Papa John's commercials actually make me yearn for a Men's Wearhouse commercial.
Jim Gaffigan
#63. It's all choreographed; it's a routine. So I told everyone I really wanted to try fighting in action films. I had no stunt experience, but I had the dance background, and I was very agile and coordinated. And the best thing about being a newcomer to acting is you can afford to try new things.
Michelle Yeoh
#64. I'm one of five; I have three sisters, so I've always had three best girlfriends. Actually, I'm the middle child, so it's no surprise I went into acting! There's a need to be seen.
Jordana Spiro
#65. I realized that acting was the thing I was still maybe the best at. Of the things I felt like I was good at, that was the thing that came the most naturally to me.
Joseph Mazzello
#66. Such is the disconcerting miracle of good acting; at its best it implicitly challenges our faith in who we are, who anyone is.
Melissa Febos
#67. And the best films feel like a fist punching you in the solar plexus and all elements of the filmmaking process - the acting, the design, the cinematography, the music, is all working to one end.
Ethan Hawke
#68. With film, you have very limited tools to convey subjectivity - voiceover, the camera's point of view, good acting - but even the very best actor in the world is crude by comparison with what you can do in a written paragraph.
William Boyd
#69. Success is not assured, but America is resolute: this is the best chance for peace we are likely to see for some years to come - and we are acting to help Israelis and Palestinians seize this chance.
Condoleezza Rice
#70. Every soul is special. They're all beautiful. They're all far more significant than anyone on this rock realizes. I think when people are at their best, they're acting in accordance with their soul. The ones who have gone bad don't have bad souls. They've just given up on keeping in touch with them.
Jim Butcher
#71. The best thing I ever learned when I first started acting is that you audition, and then you forget about it when you walk out the door. Even when you have a callback, you can't bank on things until you actually book that job, or your heart will just be broken over and over again.
Allison Tolman
#72. The Chosen Butts became an instant club of sorts. We tried our best to be professional and not act overly excited, but it was clear we were bonded because of our excellent butts I mean acting ability.
Lauren Graham
#73. Acting has always been something I've wanted to get into. I think the best models are actors; you're taking on a character. In that sense, I have been acting for a long time. It didn't seem like a crazy transition.
Liberty Ross
#74. What's the best part of acting? It's the indescribable feeling of being someone you are and someone your not, all at the same time. Acting is finding a character that's in you, forgetting yourself, and then bringing out this whole other person. Character is all that matters when you're on a stage.
Chris Coppernoll
#75. Dane DeHaan, certainly, is kind of the best friend I've made through acting, in terms of another actor. He's fantastic.
Daniel Radcliffe
#76. For better or worse, I take my acting seriously. I may not have been in the best movies ever made, but I take it deathly serious, and I love being an actor.
Matthew Lillard
#77. Even the best Christian that ever lived is not acting on his own steam
he is only nourishing or protecting a life he could never have acquired by his own efforts.
C.S. Lewis
#78. I'm lucky because my two best friends are from kindergarten so they never thought that it was a big deal that I was in acting; they don't even ever talk about it. They still act all confused, like, 'What's going on?' when we go places and people come up to me.
Miranda Cosgrove
#79. I think the best way for me to go into auditions psychologically was to say, 'You're not going to get it. This is the only acting experience you're going to have with this material.'
Janel Moloney
#80. I really think that studying theater early on really helped me to be able to identify how to get into a character, because it's such a mysterious thing. Learning objective acting in the beginning of my career was the best thing I could have ever done.
Sufe Bradshaw
#81. Being an actor is definitely not about sitting around on set and having a cigarette or something. It's about acting. The more you can audition, then that's the best thing ever because you learn so much and you get your face out there and you grow your confidence.
Erika Christensen
#82. Acting was never my first choice as a profession, but I came to terms with it when I decided I better buckle down and be the best I can be at it.
Mickey Rourke
#83. The geographical pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out an inner journey. The inner journey is the interpolation of the meanings and signs of the outer pilgrimage. One can have one without the other. It is best to have both.
Thomas Merton
#84. I'm not the best actor I can be, so I'm just working on it. I'm not the quickest reader in the world but when I get an acting book I can read it in two days.
Evan Peters
#85. I have the best agent, manager, publicist, acting coach, and lawyer. Without them, I wouldn't have the opportunities that I've had.
Rochelle Aytes
#86. Having the world's best idea will do you no good unless you act on it. People who want milk shouldn't sit on a stool in the middle of a field in hopes that a cow will back up to them.
Curtis Grant
#87. I've probably had my best time acting - or not acting, or trying to not act - on things like 'The Low Down' or 'Treacle Jr.' I'm happiest doing things like that. Not just because they're lead roles, but because there's more freedom in them.
Aidan Gillen
#88. Practice following your intuition in everyday things, trusting your gut feelings moment by moment and acting on them as best you can. As you learn to trust yourself in smaller matters, you will build power and confidence to take bigger risks and deal with the larger issues in your life successfully.
Shakti Gawain
#89. For me, it's just acting. It's pretending. The best actors are children, and children don't do research. You never see a child going, 'I'm wondering about my motivation here. How can I do this toy? How can I do this train? I don't feel train.'
Brian Cox
#90. Even when you're acting with a producing hat, when you're in every scene, you're really conscious of trying to make everybody as good as they are, because ultimately you're trying to make the best movie possible.
Michael Douglas
#91. When we make judgements we're inevitably acting on limited knowledge, isn't it best to ask if we seek to understand, or simply let them be?
Jay Woodman
#92. I love acting, every job is a dream job when you're an actor. I'd like to do eventually more film work and to collaborate with the best actors and directors in film.
Josh Hopkins
#93. When I audition, I understand what it takes and the insecurities that come with it. If I do anything, I put actors at ease. I used to tell directors who weren't actors, the best thing they could do was take an acting class for a couple of months. Just to understand.
Albert Brooks
#94. My goal is to tell good stories. And to try as best I can to do something new with acting. To learn from the past and to be a relevant artist. To make stories that are interesting and contemporary and to tell some kind of emotional truth.
Ethan Hawke
#95. I think I just want to leave my mark in some way. I hope I leave the world a better place than it was when I came, and I think the best way I can do that is through acting and writing, and hopefully it will make a difference someday.
Chris Colfer
#96. The best thing about acting is when you're playing a scene and you actually become your character and lose yourself in that moment. That's when you know you've been succeeded at what you've worked very hard to accomplish in your profession. Those are the truly thrilling moments.
Meryl Streep
#97. The best author is a dead author, because he's out of your way and you own the play. Take what he has given you and use it for what you need.
Stella Adler
#98. I'm an expert in hookers. I'm an expert in doormats. I'm an expert in victims. They were the best parts. And when I woke up
sociologically, politically, and creatively
I could no longer take those parts and look in the mirror.
Shirley Maclaine
#99. Some of the best times I've ever had in my life have been because of acting and through acting. But I'm not interested in the game of acting and being an actor and auditioning and all that stuff.
John Gordon Sinclair
#100. I prefer directing to acting. There is huge freedom that comes from being behind the camera. It brings a lot of responsibilities as well, but is intensely rewarding. Particularly the chance to help draw out the best in young actors.
Angelina Jolie
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