Top 100 Great Actors Quotes
#1. British actors are renowned for being great villains in movies, like Bond films, all the rest of it.
Luke Evans
#2. Chemistry is one of these crazy things you can't teach or learn or you can't fake. You go in hoping it will work, hope that you will connect with the other actors. I was fortunate on 'Modern Family' and 'The Procession.' They are great people, very easy to like.
Jesse Tyler Ferguson
#3. When you're starting out, you know, you have to do something on a very limited budget. You're not going to be able to have great actors, and you're most likely not going to have a great script.
Peter Jackson
#4. I get on with actors, and when I'm doing a theatre show, it's great being with them all the time. But we're all alike, and it's much nicer being with people who are different.
Phil Daniels
#5. I need to work with great directors and actors, people who are better than me, so that I am challenged. It is like playing sports - surfing, basketball, it doesn't matter what it is, if you play with people who are better than you, then you get better too. It is the same thing with acting.
Paul Walker
#6. I think it's a shame when you come across young actors and musicians who haven't had the time to learn their craft. It doesn't matter if it's acting or music; you really have to learn how to do it from the bottom up because unless you have a great work ethic ... fame is a terrible thing to have.
Denis Leary
#7. I don't know if I'm embarrassed because I think it's a funny show, but I could imagine there being a snootiness about it, but I do find 'The Big Bang Theory' very funny. I think that's a good show. I think it's fun, I like the actors; I think they're all doing a great job.
Stephen Merchant
#8. Great actors try to dismiss all ideas from their conscious mind in order to provide an experience that is real.
Mark Rylance
#9. I started a production company out of necessity, the need for great narratives for actors of color.
Viola Davis
#10. People know that I have a great love for cinema. Not just for commercial cinema, but for the 'cinema d'auteur.' But to me, two of the great 'auteurs' are actually actors and they both happen to be French. One is Alain Delon and the other is Jean-Paul Belmondo.
Harvey Weinstein
#11. When you hire great actors, you're lucky, so you just try to create an atmosphere where they can succeed and relax and take risks. You're happy that you get to watch them at the monitor and that your name is on the director's chair.
Ben Affleck
#12. I'm as anxious as any viewer would be to see what Temple is going to do next. All I know is that in the second half of the season, he's going to have more sexual tension developing. And it's a great cast - they're all Broadway actors except for me. I aspire to that.
Sean Patrick Thomas
#13. Mark Twain was so good with crowds that he became, in competition with singers and dancers and actors and acrobats, one of the most popular performers of his time. It is so unusual, and so psychologically unlikely, too, for a great writer to be a great performer, too ...
Kurt Vonnegut
#14. It's great to have actors who are often cast against type.
Tom Mison
#15. It is tragic that we have lost one of our nation's finest actors in the prime of his life. Heath Ledger's diverse and challenging roles will be remembered as some of the great performances by an Australian actor.
Kevin Rudd
#16. One of the great things about doing series television is the guest actors that you can have come on and play around with.
David Duchovny
#17. In the great drama of existence we are audience and actors at the same time.
Niels Bohr
#18. I'd say working on television is much, much tougher than films. But television has a great connect with a live audience, which is a refreshing change for us actors.
Kajol
#19. Heart of America is a movie I'm very proud of. The young actors are great and the story has impact.
Uwe Boll
#20. Things that make me laugh range from a wonderful stand-up like Jerry Seinfeld, Louis C.K. and Chris Rock to my son Gabe, who does great improv work. I also look backwards to the great comedic actors like Jackie Gleason, Paul Lynde and Phil Silvers.
Jason Alexander
#22. If you think back to the moments when you've gone through the most pain in your life, or the most severe anxiety, your body is very much involved in that. Your body is expressing those emotions. So, when we, as actors, try to access those feelings, the body is a great tool to use.
Joel Kinnaman
#23. My two great loves when I'm shooting are working with great actors and composing images.
Tom Hooper
#24. If you're a great documentary filmmaker, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're a great narrative filmmaker. There are fantastic documentary filmmakers that can't direct actors. You don't have to do that in a documentary, if it's a real documentary.
Alexander Skarsgard
#25. Actors spend a great deal of their time making films. And that doesn't mean that they're not educated. But we haven't gone to law school and we're not experts on policy. We're just people with a platform and an opinion. But that should never be enough, in my opinion, to be political.
Angelina Jolie
#26. Actors can be many things - vain, venal, self-serving, obnoxious, bullies - but all of the good ones are great storytellers. I wanted to watch what my actors were doing and how they were telling the story.
Paul Bettany
#27. We reinvent ourselves to solve a client's problem. It's more than just tweaking. It's rethinking what your audience wants and needs. Isn't that what great actors constantly do?
Merrie Spaeth
#28. It's always a really great thing to have an actor that does make you want to up your game. It naturally motivates you to do and try things that maybe you wouldn't necessarily do or try.
Johnny Galecki
#29. I got my first job when I moved to Los Angeles. I worked at a coffee shop for five years and it was one of the best experiences I ever had. It was a bunch of actors covering shifts for each other and becoming great friends.
Katie Leclerc
#30. It's always hard as an actor I think to be just on the set and have the kind of confidence to be like, 'Yeah, I did that. That went perfectly. That's great.' That's more confidence than I have.
Noel Fisher
#31. As an actor, often you're stuck with these scenes in which a great period of time is in between them - for example, if you do a biopic, it might be a year, it might be a decade, you never know.
Aden Young
#32. I'm really enjoying being an actor right now, at this point in my life. It's a great job, it's a huge responsibility, and I just want to do it more.
Shannyn Sossamon
#33. If you got a good imagination, a lot of confidence and you kind of know what you are saying, then you might be able to do it. I know a lot of colorful characters at home that would make great actors.
Jason Statham
#34. When you're creating new roles out of scratch in my opinion working with the actors is a great asset. You can learn a lot from that.
Beau Willimon
#35. With both Caddyshack and Vacation, it's not like the subjects were serious enough that they engaged my interest for another round. I love the characters, and the actors were great, but I didn't see the need to make another Vacation movie.
Harold Ramis
#36. I always say that, if you have great actors and great storytelling and great monsters, and you mix them together, nine times out of 10, it explodes in your face.
Gregory Nicotero
#37. Every film by Will Smith, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Lena Horne, Ruby Dee, Don Cheadle will have great acting and carry good messages in the film. The films starring those actors are the films I tell young people to watch for good acting and to view for quality movies.
Brian J. White
#38. I'd never really done comedy before 'Community,' so getting to work day in and day out with all these great people, directors, writers, and actors, I feel like I've learned a lot.
Gillian Jacobs
#39. First we pre-visualized it so the actors could act. It took a long time to get that to come to life and to design those coming out of the screen. We had great fun with that. It takes a long time, a year maybe.
Ang Lee
#40. The actors in Britain are incredible, and I didn't appreciate that until I got there. They interpret your words and you realize how deliberate and thoughtful they are. There are great American actors, too, don't get me wrong, but the technique that British actors have is something really special.
Frank Spotnitz
#42. Good actors, especially when they know their character, will come in and either tell you in advance that they have an idea, or in the middle of the rehearsal or the scene they'll let it loose and you go, 'Ah that's great.'
Denis Leary
#43. I always think the great parts outlive the actors that play them and that's a stage tradition, that goes back hundreds of years and it should be that way.
Hugh Jackman
#44. Men, you are about to embark on a great crusade to stamp out runaway decency in the west. Now you men will only be risking your lives, whilst I will be risking an almost certain Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
Harvey Korman
#45. I don't want to infantilize the actor; I want to empower the actor. Actors can be many things, but all of the really good ones are really great storytellers, and I'm interested in that. If you're not interested in that as a director then you better be Stanley Kurbrick.
Paul Bettany
#46. The joy is when you work with great actors, it just comes to life in a way that you never even imagined.
Victor Garber
#47. I keep reading about people who want to be famous - it's not that they want to be great songwriters or great actors, they want to be celebrities. That is scary because you can be famous doing some really stupid things.
Barry Manilow
#48. It's about storytelling. The story is told through images. So with the cast, I had to make sure that the emotions were readable without sound ... I know some great actors, if you turn off the sound, you don't really know what they're saying.
Michel Hazanavicius
#49. I have great respect for actors like Jodie Foster and Natalie Portman who went to school the entire time they were acting. All I did was one small little independent film, and I realised I couldn't balance both lives.
Nikki Reed
#50. The actors are different, although I didn't set out to be different. My inspiration came from people like Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence and Will Smith. The genre is what it is. My inspiration was drawn from great movies like 48 Hours, Bad Boys and Rush Hour.
Tracy Morgan
#51. I'm lucky to have worked with great actors, my whole career.
Elizabeth Banks
#52. While actors are great and awesome, writers literally create new worlds from scratch. What is sexier than that? Personally, I don't know why every last person out there isn't dating a writer.
Rachel Bloom
#53. The excitement for me lies not so much in interviewing the hard-to-get famous person, but the person whom you are about to discover. You know, like maybe the character actors who are just coming into their own and you're realizing how great they are.
Terry Gross
#54. I really love young Tom Hanks. He's just one of my favorites. He's a great, quirky every-man. I also love Zach Braff. I really love actors that are quirky and interesting, that sort of try to portray 'normal' people.
Jake Epstein
#55. When I played Robin Hood, I knew the great role was Alan Rickman's and it didn't bother me. I always think that leading actors should be called the best supporting actors.
Kevin Costner
#57. The more and more I work with really great actors, the more it's about opening yourself up to what they bring.
Tom Hooper
#58. Working with big actors and realising that they were just normal people who've got an incredible talent was just a great experience.
Tom Felton
#59. 'The Fight Club' DVD is great. I like anything that has really good extras because as an actor, it's really great to see the behind-the-scenes stuff and see how different actors approach their particular project.
A. J. Cook
#60. For no. 1, it's great writing, super writing. The second thing is that it's great chemistry with all the actors. We just all got along from the very start. Very get-go, we all got along. We just - it was just like we were all meant to be there together.
Reba McEntire
#61. Even though a screenplay is performed only once, unlike other forms of drama, it's still a performance in itself, and unless it's a great performance, odds are that actors will not come, and a movie will never be made.
William Monahan
#62. You find with the really great actors, the ones you really admire and look up to, very often they're very giving, generous, warm people.
Kit Harington
#63. The virtue you would like to have, assume it is already yours, appropriate it, enter into the part and live the character just as the great actor is absorbed in ... the part he plays.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#64. People tend to think when you're on dramatic films, that it's all so heavy, but it's really not when you're working with great actors.
Maria Bello
#65. 'The Big Chill' had a bunch of really talented actors, a great soundtrack, and the college connections that the characters shared. It's one of those movies I glean something different from every time I watch it.
Malcolm D. Lee
#66. I think filmmakers, in general ... There are some awesome, really great filmmakers - but on the whole, filmmakers, actors, I think they are the biggest bunch of whiny, over-paid babies on the planet.
Eli Roth
#67. Great actors help. Every project is different. Sometimes it's completely open, and I've been able to cast who I've wanted. And then sometimes people want a certain kind of actor.
Lisa Cholodenko
#68. He felt as if he had left a stage behind and many actors.
He felt as if he had left the great seance and all the murmuring ghosts.
He was moving from an unreality that was frightening into a reality that was unreal because it was new.
Ray Bradbury
#69. The goal for me is always to have the opportunity to work in different genres. This is a great and exciting time in my career, where I can have the opportunity to work in different genres, and also I recognize there's not a lot of actors who have that opportunity and I'm grateful for it.
Dwayne Johnson
#70. Whether he's doing great acting or not, you're seeing somebody who is in the tradition of a great actor. What he does with it, that's something else, but he's got it all. The talent, the instrument is there, that's why he has endured.
Al Pacino
#71. The Old Vic has always been first and foremost an actors' theatre, a home for great talent and memorable performances.
Kevin Spacey
#72. I feel very fortunate, I've been exposed to a lot of different cultures. If I wasn't from a multi-ethnic background, I wouldn't have had these great experiences. And one of the things that makes me a good actor is life experience.
Navi Rawat
#73. John Barrymore was a serious actor who did a great deal of research for all his parts, until, I guess, he was around 50. Then he started drinking heavily ... So he drank himself to death. It took him 10 years.
John Carradine
#74. There are so many stage actors on TV but you wouldn't know they were stage actors. And film and TV actors are going to the stage as well, so the crossover is great now.
Matthew Morrison
#75. It always bothered me when people came off stage and were told how great they were. They weren't, really, in my opinion. It was then I started thinking that, contrary to conventional wisdom, film was the artful medium for the actor, not the stage.
Jack Nicholson
#76. The great amount of fun that I have is I can cast dramatic actors to play comedic roles, and I can cast comedic actors to play dramatic roles because, really, there's no such thing. There's just actors.
Noah Hawley
#77. I think I come from a theatrical tradition where, if you look at the great theatrical actors of the British theatre, they took enormous pride in being wildly different from one role to the next. That's the tradition I come from.
James Purefoy
#78. William Hartnell was one of the great unsung character actors of his time
David Bradley
#79. The atmosphere and the environment that you get on a Chris Nolan film that he and Emma [Tomson] create is one where you feel very safe and very confident and able to experiment with characters. It's a great place to be as an actor.
Christopher Nolan
#80. For me it came from the material. It was so well written and brought the opportunity to work with great actors. And of course the opportunity to 'mince about' was an added element that I wanted to take advantage of!
Dwayne Johnson
#81. I think people who are artists, actors, singers, great songwriters, they tend to have a hyper state of emotion where they feel things very, very deeply, probably more deeply than the average person walking down the street where it may affect them, but not to the same extent.
Willie Aames
#82. It's great, it's a creative process! It's something that I've been hungry for and I feel like I'm getting fed every day! We've got Adam and Joe in the room, and it's intense but it's a good intensity, you know? It's kind of like an actor's dream.
Kendra Kassebaum
#83. If you have a great part, you have the opportunity to give a good performance. The greatest actors get the best parts, and the best parts make the greatest actors. There are plenty of people who are as talented, who just never got the part.
Tom Hollander
#84. People are always talking about the old days. They say that the old movies were better, that the old actors were so great. But I don't think so. All I can say about the old days is that they have passed.
Kirk Douglas
#85. I would love to get great performances from actors as a director, because that's what I'm always looking for, a director that's going to help me go places I've never been before.
Aaron Eckhart
#86. If you're lucky enough to work with great actors and creative people, they're always just going to be who they are, so I don't think there's a difference between the Brits and the Americans.
Josh Dallas
#87. Even great actors shine brighter in the right atmosphere.
Caleb Deschanel
#88. ...as an actor there's nothing better than a great moody moment to play with nothing to say. It's so much easier to do because you can really get inside your head.
Ewan McGregor
#89. There are some great actors I don't want to meet because I don't want to know how they did it. I don't want to know anything about their personal life, and the illusion, or whatever it is, the shape-shiftery magic stuff that they do, which is my joy.
Rupert Friend
#90. I always thought that Bill Murray was one of the great actors that I've worked with. And I've worked with all kinds of people who are known primarily for their dramatic work.
Ivan Reitman
#91. [Marlon] Brando's a giant on every level. When he acts it's as if he landed from another planet. A planet where they produce great actors.
Al Pacino
#92. Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd are really amazing, lovely people and really great comedic actors.
Malin Akerman
#93. I love working with Scorsese. He's not only a brilliant director and is great working with actors, but he's also a walking human film encyclopedia. It's fun to talk about movies with him.
Steve Buscemi
#94. There's a lot of great stuff on television and that's very appealing to actors who want to work, who do good quality and high quality work. But you're always concerned that the time demands on television will interrupt or interfere with your film work.
Wesley Snipes
#95. Rajni Sir is very dedicated and punctual. It was great experience acting with him both as a person and as an actor. The way he maintains himself is amazing.
Nayantara
#96. I think a lot of theater actors that were great, like Walken or Glenn Close, later became film actors.
Sam Rockwell
#97. Nobody is out to sabotage an entire script and do an improvisational experiment of a movie, but when they're feeling something in the moment, let them make it their own. That's what makes them great actors.
Dan Fogelman
#98. The truth is that to enjoy acting one must be an exhibitionist at heart, one must revel in those exposures of the emotions which would be agonizing to a shy or reserved person. All the great actors have been and are exhibitionists.
Leslie Howard
#99. Great actors like Willem Dafoe and Ellen Page and Samuel L. Jackson will go and do a videogame, because they understand that storytelling isn't just necessarily about filmmaking.
Andy Serkis
#100. To be honest, I don't necessarily think you have to be an actor to act. You don't have to be a musician to make great music. If it comes along and you put your all into it, the outcome is what's important.
Andre Benjamin
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
