Top 100 Drama Acting Quotes
#1. Opera is the most complete art form. It includes drama, acting, technology (lighting), art (the sets), dance, and the epitome of the human voices. But mostly, go for the glorious music. The arts are crucial to the life of every community.
Karen DeCrow
#2. People who work in offices are crazy, they create an environment they hate, write rules they want to break, cast each other in roles they despise. It's like they're sixth formers in an end of term drama acting out the agony of everything they fear most in their life but they forget to end the play.
Helen Smith
#3. As a teenager, I was really interested in drama and art. I did painting and drawing. I did some acting and loved theater.
Sarah Gavron
#4. I started acting when I was seven. And I went to a local drama school which is very well-known in London. Because of that, I started getting jobs, and I worked all the time as a child, pretty much non-stop.
Naomie Harris
#5. I acted in high school and studied at the British American Drama Academy in Oxford for one summer. I minored in theater, and I was always acting growing up, but really, I was just more interested in the comedy of it all.
T. J. Miller
#7. Twenty years earlier, in a life [Kirsten] mostly couldn't remember, she had had a small nonspeaking role in a short-lived Toronto production of King Lear. Now she walked in sandals whose soles had been cut from an automobile tire, three knives in her belt.
Emily St. John Mandel
#8. My acting has always been in the world of comedy, but in my writing, other than writing sketches, I really am drawn to the balance between comedy and drama. I like things that sort of toe that line of one minute you're in this emotional space and then all of the sudden something happens.
Jim Rash
#9. My acting career began when I walked into a drama school class run by Anna Scher in Islington. Anna discovered a lot of people: Linda Robson, Pauline Quirke, Gary and Martin Kemp, and Dexter Fletcher were among my contemporaries.
Phil Daniels
#11. It was a relief to inhabit someone else's life for a while, to get her personal issues for a brief respite. In a play, she knew exactly how all her character's problems would be resolved. No matter how the cast performed, the end turned out the same. No questions, no worries, no unknowns.
Alexandra Robbins
#12. I do my independent stuff where it's real acting if you like. Intense, drama stuff. I love me actions.
Vinnie Jones
#13. Whether I'm acting or making it, at the end of the day it's telling the story; action, drama. You want the audience to feel it - the story, the action, the scene, or a particular shot. I just keep working on crafting my art, on how to make action movies.
Donnie Yen
#14. For me, I can't live without acting or drama and writing - I also run a theater company.
Tom Cullen
#15. For people who don't know or didn't know that I started off as a singer, singing requires a certain level of drama, in itself. Honestly, it really prepared me to do this, and I've been really blessed to be able to transition into the acting world very smoothly.
Naturi Naughton
#16. I was the suburban kid of Scottish parents, and the idea of an acting career was so beyond my experience. I didn't even know there were drama schools until a friend told me.
Lindsay Duncan
#17. Actually, the year anniversary of what you just heard, my son Grahame and I are going to be in a play together, and I'm acting for the first time in front of an audience that doesn't consist of a high school drama class.
Phil Lesh
#18. In war, people find themselves in extraordinary circumstances, and in those circumstances, they act in extraordinary ways. In war, you see people at their very best and their very worst, acting in ways you could never imagine. War is human drama at its most epic and most intense.
Dexter Filkins
#19. I was always interested in the arts as a child - drawing, painting, and piano - but acting became a favourite. I was a major theatre geek in high school - if I wasn't in the drama room at lunch rehearsing, I'd be in the art room finishing up some type of project.
Laura Mennell
#20. From there I did a one year theatre acting course in Fife, and then three years of drama school in London.
Ewan McGregor
#21. As for acting, I took drama lessons when I was in high school.
Megan Gallagher
#22. I was at university and I was studying modern drama and studying English, and I just was like, 'I don't wanna be in this place. I wanna be acting.'
Melanie Lynskey
#23. I love filmmaking, but I decided to go to drama school because I thought that when I'm 60 and looking back on my life, if acting hadn't been a part of it, I would hate myself.
Lupita Nyong'o
#24. I've always felt that acting is acting at the end of the day, so whether you're doing comedy or heavy drama or anything else in between, you always have to bring a semblance of honesty to it. It's all make believe.
Benjamin Bratt
#25. Acting is easier and smoother than singing - it's less drama.
Beyonce Knowles
#26. The imagination is closer to the actor than real life-more agreeable, more comfortable.
Stella Adler
#27. I always liked acting in school and drama classes, but when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always told them I wanted to be a singer. I didn't want to be a jack of all trades. I wanted to master one.
Eliza Doolittle
#28. Whenever I get on stage, I feel safe and in control. Life can be so uncertain, but on stage, I always know how a drama or crisis is going to end. Acting is a great comfort blanket and has gotten me through countless personal crises. I am a firm believer that the show must go on.
Kate O'Mara
#29. When I decided that I might want to do acting for a living - I don't know where it really came from, since there was no school play or any of that - my mom gave me her blessing. I had to get a scholarship - that was the only way I could have gone to drama school.
Gary Oldman
#30. I probably prefer comedy. Why? I'm not sure. I feel like the energy of a comedy is a better fit for me. I try to be a happy guy! It seems that most of my life has the energy more for a comedy than for drama. I'm grateful to do both, but I would have to lean towards the comedy side of acting.
Cameron Mathison
#31. My tutors at drama school commended and criticised my use of comedy in my acting for a long time at drama school. They said I had a tendency to somehow perform the most tragic of scenes in a slightly flippant way.
John Bradley-West
#32. In the end, it's acting, it's not real. But every director will tell you that you have to create conditions that create tension, because tension is what makes drama feel real.
Paul Greengrass
#33. I've always been in school plays and performing monologues and taking drama. Now I'm in acting classes. I do it the real way. I want to be a working actor. I would love that. I just like being on a series and having a script, and I want that to be my nine-to-five.
Vinny Guadagnino
#34. I am acting at university, and I have really enjoyed doing student drama.
Anna Popplewell
#35. My biggest accomplishment was playing 'Lark' on the daytime drama Port Charles because it was the most regular acting job I have had, and I had to step in and fill someone else's shoes.
Amy Weber
#36. How I love - writing, acting, breathing the atmosphere- and one day I'll have it. If I cannot write, I shall die.
Lily Koppel
#37. Drama school, you know, I own an acting school, Actor Prepares.
Anupam Kher
#38. I finally learned that doing what I want isn't love. I don't want to hurt him again by acting childish.
Na Hae Ryeong
#39. Fortunately, I never had to do the waiter thing. When I got out of college, I immediately started to teach acting. One of the first jobs I had was in a federally-funded program where I taught drama to young people.
Bill Nunn
#40. One of the reasons why I went to the Yale School of Drama is because I felt that I was acting off of instinct, but sometimes that is not reliable. When you're not feeling it, what do you do? So, going to grad school was about getting the tools to just use my instrument to the best of my ability.
Lupita Nyong'o
#41. Conflict is what creates drama. The more conflict actors find, the more interesting the performance.
Michael Shurtleff
#42. Comedy ... is much harder to do than drama. It's not true that laugh and the world laughs with you. It's very hard to make a group of people laugh at the same thing; much easier to make them cry at the same thing ... That's why great comic acting is probably the greatest acting there is.
Glenda Jackson
#43. I carried on acting during school holidays and was all set to go to drama school when I was offered my first professional job appearing in 'King David' with Richard Gere.
Gina Bellman
#44. Comedy's my first love. I love that so much. You play comedy in drama, too. The difference between genres doesn't really change the method of acting.
Emma Stone
#45. Acting is a tough industry. There are a lot of kids out there at drama schools and not a lot of money about, especially as the arts are being cut.
Phil Daniels
#46. I took up drama and did so much extracurricular work, like the National Youth Theatre and Guildhall's Saturday school. Acting is where I felt most comfortable and how I wanted to express myself.
Douglas Booth
#47. When the time came to make a decision about what do in life, I found myself thinking that acting was the thing I loved to do, so I applied to drama school. And then, I didn't get in - twice.
Emily Watson
#48. You don't learn acting, you nourish it. I don't regret not going to drama school because I was very afraid of all the lessons. I'm allergic to technicality.
Romain Duris
#49. I think the point to be understood is that we're all different. I've never been a fan of theories of acting. I didn't go to drama school, so I was never put through a training that was limited by someone saying, 'This is the way you should act.'
Ian McKellen
#50. If you count my childhood appearances in a few TV shows and being the son of two well-known actor parents in the U.K., plus three years of drama school, you could say that I've been pretty much surrounded by the business of acting and performing my entire life.
Linus Roache
#51. So I was determined to use my last two years in college doing something I thought I would enjoy, which was acting. And it was probably because there was girls over in the drama school too, you know?
James Earl Jones
#52. When I came into the industry I started with acting and I did drama during junior high and high school. I fell into dancing as a hobby, but whenever you need work, you try out different things. So I booked a lot of jobs for dancing and it kept rolling and rolling.
Harry Shum Jr.
#53. I'm a bit of a fraud, really, as I didn't study acting at a drama school.
Celia Imrie
#54. If you can't take both sides, it means you can only play yourself.
Stella Adler
#55. No actor is a success unless he feels inside himself, as long as he lives, that he is good.
Stella Adler
#56. When I was younger and studying acting, I never ever saw myself in the sitcom world; it was drama that really turned me on and still does.
Matt LeBlanc
#57. Most of my training at graduate school was geared towards drama, so I feel good about it, and I can do it, but it requires a lot more work from me. I feel like with drama ... well, with all acting, really, you need to honor the truth of the situation.
Andrea Anders
#58. Depending on what your interest in theater is, I always recommend working on plays. It's a great way to be introduced to the field, and also a great way to be seen by agents and representation. I'm also a great advocate for studying acting at a drama school or a college.
Chiwetel Ejiofor
#59. You'll never really be great unless you aim high.
Stella Adler
#60. You need to take some acting classes to learn to hide your huge crush on my husband better
Mary Papas
#61. I did a lot of acting at school and university, then I went to drama school. It was quite a normal route.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#62. The stage is a magic circle where only the most real things happen, a neutral territory outside the jurisdiction of Fate where stars may be crossed with impunity. A truer and more real place does not exist in all the universe.
P.S. Baber
#63. You know, a lot of actors I think go into acting for therapy from whatever trauma has affected them as children. But for me, I think I sought out the drama. That's why I like doing what I do.
Michael Ealy
#64. When you do your comedy and your drama, your acting style doesn't change. If it's a comedy, the situations and the characters might be a little funnier, but you're just trying to be honest.
Jonah Hill
#65. I was like the class clown in school so I guess I would say I did like the attention. In church I did a lot of plays, my mother made me play characters, do a lot of drama and acting, trying to become someone else. So it helped me create who I am, to create Snoop Dogg.
Snoop Dogg
#66. At the end of drama school, I made a contract with myself: I'd try acting for five years. I was 26. I had already spent eight years working in restaurants and gas stations. So I had seen enough small businesses to understand that that's what acting is: a small business.
Hugh Jackman
#67. My experiences and training back at drama school were very enlightening. I always believe in improving, be it kathak or my acting skills, and would want to experiment more when it comes to work.
Jiah Khan
#68. I had no idea what it took to be an actor. Then all of a sudden I found myself cast in a TV drama. The director was very harsh with me. One time, he told me this would be my first and last acting job. I seriously thought that acting was not the right career for me.
Lee Byung-hun
#69. I don't think my acting was ever bad; I always knew that I could do it. But when you go to audition for a drama, they're very serious in the room, and I was used to being kind of goofy and having small talk.
Mary Lynn Rajskub
#70. We don't have drama in public schools in France. I had never taking an acting class.
Stephanie Szostak
#71. One of the difficulties of being a writer must be that you create drama that you can't live out. That's one of the wonderful things about acting.
Anjelica Huston
#72. When you're in your early 20s, a lot of characters can be one or two dimensional. You want a role to substantiate the drama, as opposed to actually analyzing the psychology of a human being. That's what drew me to acting, particularly the contradictions in people.
Tom Hughes
#73. I generally like grey roles. My interpretation of drama is different from the popular perception. Acting, for me, is not about overplaying, it is about concealing. I like flawed characters that people relate to. I would never do a romcom.
Emraan Hashmi
#74. I never imagined I'd go into acting, but I always loved drama, and when I was 16, I discovered the Library Theatre up the road. So I plucked up courage and asked if I could watch rehearsals. It was like Heaven.
Lesley Nicol
#75. I went to drama school at NYU for serious acting. So I was doing Chekov and Sam Shepard plays.
Casey Wilson
#76. Acting and singing were just a hobby, but getting into drama school made me realise I could actually do it for a living.
Birgitte Hjort Sorensen
#77. 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
#78. But then I got a job selling coffee at the York Theatre, and when I met theatre people, something clicked. I felt comfortable with them; I felt like myself. I decided to go to drama school based just on that feeling. I had never done any acting.
Janet McTeer
#79. When you're a drama student, I think the most you hope for is to make a living out of acting.
Tom Ellis
#80. When I was a freshman in high school, my drama teacher, an incredible, inspirational genius, the guy who got me into acting, he encouraged me to get the lead in a musical. They didn't have any guys.
Casey Affleck
#81. I suppose the best advice I ever got, frankly the advice that changed my life, came from my uncle who told me to go to drama school and study acting instead of taking a job, because he said the job would always be there.
Elizabeth Banks
#82. Drama is easier to do because you just have to have the emotion and not get caught acting, but comedy is much harder.
Patrick Dempsey
#83. I just wanted to be a composer; I became an actor by default, really. I got a scholarship to a college of music and drama, hoping to take a scholarship in music. But I ended up as an acting student, so I've stuck with that for the last 50-odd years.
Anthony Hopkins
#84. When I left drama school, my fear was that I'd get pigeon holed into comic acting and I did so much to counter it that I got stuck in the opposite.
Rufus Sewell
#85. Would you like an interview for the drama, too?"
"I can't act."
"Everyone can act. We spend our lives acting.
Tanith Lee
#86. I got into acting my junior year of high school. We got a new hot drama teacher and I was like 'Alright, I'll try drama.'
Miles Teller
#87. I worked in theater my whole life. My mom was a drama teacher at my middle school. In high school, I was Drama Club President every year, and then I auditioned for conservatory acting programs.
Jenn Proske
#88. I wasn't one of the ones voted most likely to succeed when I was at drama school, but I persevered and concentrated on the acting rather than going to the right parties and getting the right agent. Eventually, after ten years, it paid off.
Eddie Marsan
#89. Rooting about in themselves for the source of their discomfort, they undergo agonies of unnecessary guilt. They seem blankly unaware that what they are feeling inside themselves is the subjective reflection of a much larger objective crisis: they are acting out an unwitting drama within a drama.
Alvin Toffler
#90. I first got into acting when I was about 12. I started doing speech and drama lessons. All my friends were doing it at the time and my dad encouraged it. He encouraged any extracurricular activity.
Bella Heathcote
#91. I thought acting was all about natural instinct but I've realised, through working with so many talented actors on 'Wild Swans' and 'Run,' that I can see the training. That's why I am back at drama school.
Katie Leung
#92. I'd always enjoyed acting at high school, and I was all lined up to do an honours degree course in biology at a Canadian university, and at the eleventh hour the drama teacher I had said, 'You know, you'll get a lot more girls if you go into acting,' and that kinda sold it.
Matt Frewer
#93. I think I was about 18 before I decided I wanted to pursue acting. I went to drama school in Western Australia when I was 19.
Dustin Clare
#94. I've been acting since I was 5 years old, from primary school to secondary school, did training at drama school, which was the big thing for me because they trained me, put me out into the industry.
John Boyega
#95. I love an acting challenge, and I love getting to sit down with my script and do all my drama work.
Kelly McCreary
#96. I went to comprehensive school in North London and left without any qualifications [diploma]. And I was doing bits of acting and improv in a drama club in the evenings. Then I discovered you didn't need qualifications to go to art school, you just needed a body of work.
Joe Wright
#98. At some point in time, you definitely have to go drama. Not to say that you're going drama just because everybody else does it. You do it to challenge yourself. You do it because, naturally, in the profession of acting, you want to show growth. You want to say that you take the craft seriously.
Kevin Hart
#99. Drama school is fundamentally practical. I didn't write any essays, so I came out with a BA honors degree in acting.
Emilia Clarke
#100. I only ever wanted to be a model. This acting thing - three years of drama school - is an accident!
Gwendoline Christie
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