Top 100 Great Actors Quotes
#1. 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
#2. Great actors try to dismiss all ideas from their conscious mind in order to provide an experience that is real.
Mark Rylance
#3. 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
#5. My two great loves when I'm shooting are working with great actors and composing images.
Tom Hooper
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. 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
#9. The joy is when you work with great actors, it just comes to life in a way that you never even imagined.
Victor Garber
#10. 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
#11. 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
#12. I'm lucky to have worked with great actors, my whole career.
Elizabeth Banks
#14. The more and more I work with really great actors, the more it's about opening yourself up to what they bring.
Tom Hooper
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. 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
#20. Even great actors shine brighter in the right atmosphere.
Caleb Deschanel
#21. 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
#22. 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
#23. [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
#24. 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
#25. 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
#26. 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
#27. I call this book The Intent to Live because great actors don't seem to be acting, they seem to be actually living.
Larry Moss
#28. I want to work with great filmmakers and great actors and get better as an actor.
Bradley Cooper
#29. My heroes are Bill Murray and Dustin Hoffman. Those are the two actors that both do comedies and dramas, seamlessly. Also John C. Reilly and Philip Seymour Hoffman. They're all just great actors, neither comedic nor dramatic. They're just great actors.
Jonah Hill
#30. I personally want to work with great directors and great actors. My thing is about being inspired. You want money to come, but money doesn't always come with great art. At the end of the day, it's about being satisfied with yourself as a human being. It's important to me to try to make that happen.
Scott Cohen
#31. The great actors we had came from the actor-manager theaters. Not only did they create a team, they were the generals working with the soldiers.
Steven Berkoff
#32. I love talking about acting. I'm just such a fan of actors and filmmakers, and I try to choose roles where I get to talk to great actors about acting and learn.
Jessica Chastain
#33. I get to play a great character while working with great actors and great directors on a great show.
Harry Hamlin
#34. The great actors, like Cary Grant, and the gentlemanliness that they portray in the movies is something that I try to keep in mind.
Michiel Huisman
#35. I really believe great actors, even with disease and age, can be great.
Olivier Martinez
#36. Acting is all about big hair and funny props ... All the great actors knew it. Olivier knew it, Brando knew it.
Harold Ramis
#37. Who could have asked for anything better? I was cast in movies with great actors, with great leading men.
Julie Adams
#38. I just get to go to work with such great actors who are so talented, especially Elizabeth (Perkins). You are so wonderful and kind and good and wonderful and sexy and great, and I just want to make out with all of you.
Mary-Louise Parker
#40. In terms of directors, great actors make directors - Gary Oldman was great to work with, for me; Tim Roth, too. You work with Scorsese and Spielberg and they were wonderful directors, but for me, working with actor/directors is special.
Ray Winstone
#41. I know from my own experience that great films and great actors can have a really big influence on you. There is a place for art in the world, and if you're lucky enough to be good at something and to keep being given work, it's not such a bad thing.
Sally Hawkins
#42. You can have a bunch of great actors in a film, but if you don't have anyone telling a great story, it's a moot point.
Sarah Gadon
#43. I do think opportunity breeds bravery. It's such a competitive profession, no one owes you anything, talent in itself is not enough. I went to drama school with so many great actors who are not doing it anymore and it's circumstantial.
David Oyelowo
#44. We're lucky enough, especially in these 'Madagascar' films, to be working with some of the best people in the industry, who are not only great actors, but great comedians and improvisers and filmmakers. And they then become a part of creating their characters.
Eric Darnell
#45. The difference between great actors and the rest of us isn't simply that they know how to make more out of less, but that, like lions at the watering hole, they will always take more than their share from the pool of available resources - extra air from the room, added knowledge from our faces.
John Burnham Schwartz
#46. Britain produces great actors because they learn on stage so know their stuff when they get on a movie set.
Jerry Weintraub
#47. At a certain level, great actors who are successful actors don't have to worry about it. They can just go for it because they believe in themselves.
Eric Balfour
#48. Moviegoers like to believe that those they have made stars are great actors. People used to say that Gary Cooper was a fine actor probably because when they looked in his face they were ready to give him their power of attorney.
Pauline Kael
#49. You always want to make sure that you're not the weak link. You're surrounded by really talented, great actors and singers, so just staying on your game is the main thing.
Drew Seeley
#50. There's so many things I want to do. I want to work with great filmmakers, great actors, great scripts. And there's no reason for me to do anything short of that, because I'm 24, I don't have a family, I don't need to make tons of money, and I'm not dying to get famous.
Tobey Maguire
#51. Working at BBC, at the head of one of the top dramas, is a tradition for great actors.
Idris Elba
#52. I don't have a great instrument. I don't have the kind of ungodly control over my voice and body that great actors have. And I've worked with enough great actors to know that I'm not one.
Aaron Sorkin
#53. A lot of movie stars are not great actors; they're just very good-looking. And when they start to age and they don't have the looks any more, then it's over.
Michael Caine
#54. Great actors come with depth about how their character sees the world, and they completely defend it. They could defend it in a court of law, down to the reason the patient deserved this.
M. Night Shyamalan
#55. I think all great actors - and I don't classify myself as one of them, incidentally - but I think all great actors listen well and I've learned that from a lot of the very good actors with whom I've worked - to really listen to what people say.
John Frankenheimer
#56. It makes me feel good that I can now sit there and go, I've worked with Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, all the great actors that I've worked with ... Sir Ben Kingsley.
Aaron Eckhart
#57. For me, what makes great actors, always is how truthful they are to the character and the story and the emotion that they're trying to tell.
Billy Boyd
#58. I've been really lucky to work with a lot of really great actors, so watching the films back, it's really important to admire the people that you were working with and see their full performance.
Juno Temple
#59. I think every actor is looking for a challenge, and to play something different, and to be a part of a project with other great actors.
Hilary Duff
#60. The truly great actors, like Charlize Theron, are just like, "I'm an actor. For hire. I show up, I do my job." There's no "I'm just waiting for the inspiration." They just do their jobs. They say, "Let's go over the scene a few times and get it."
Patton Oswalt
#61. Directing is like cooking, it's like cuisine. You cannot make a great dish with bad ingredients. I have great actors, and I'm putting them together. That's all I'm doing.
Louis Leterrier
#62. Still, on 'Friends', we had some guest-stars who were less than spectacular, not the stunt-casting, but just regular guest-stars, and they weren't particularly great actors, but the material was so good that they scored. It's the writing.
Matt LeBlanc
#63. I know some really great actors who are pretty judgmental people, pretty critical people. But they're great actors. When they're acting, that's the craft.
Philip Seymour Hoffman
#64. I just want to keep doing things completely different from the other. I just want to keep working with great people, great filmmakers and great actors and just building on that experience.
Christopher Egan
#65. I've worked with a couple of these really cool, great actors like Ted Danson and Glenn Close. They all have their own presence when they walk into a room, and I was excited to see what Tom Selleck's 'space' was going to be like.
Vanessa Ray
#66. I'm largely interested in people who are just great actors, and they're not necessarily hugely famous.
Tobias Menzies
#67. Truly great actors carry their characters in silence with them. They communicate without words the relationships that predate the movie.
Sam Mendes
#68. I mean, the actors that I admired were Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, an actress named Barbara Harris. And Greta Garbo. They were great actors.
Robert De Niro
#69. Nine out of 10 times these guys will hit it-they'll be on something incredibly funny, but one out of 10, two out of 10, they'll fall flat on their faces. That's what makes them great actors: they take those chances, they don't play it safe.
Peter Farrelly
#70. While great leaders may be as rare as great runners, great actors, or great painters, everyone has leadership potential, just as everyone has some ability at running, acting, and painting.
Warren G. Bennis
#71. Great actors who I want to work with-have such a misconception of who I am because of all the things that get said about me.
Lindsay Lohan
#72. Great actors are people who just meld into the part without calling attention to the fact that they are so-and-so doing this part. They may never become huge stars, but will always, in memory, stay respected actors.
Shekhar Kapur
#73. I know that some great actors can transform, and that's fine. But I come from the school of thought that people put a version of themselves in their films.
Dito Montiel
#74. I mean, you know, actors lives - you're forgotten. Look at Barrymore, and look at all the great actors. They're forgotten after awhile.
Anthony Quinn
#76. I had to work with Ben Mendelsohn who's one of the great actors of our time. I had a lot of scenes with him and I was thrilled to be on the set with him; I just wanted to see how we were going to play it.
John Leguizamo
#77. Great writing attracts great actors. It attracts money. Without a great script, you have nothing.
Andy Garcia
#78. Supporting characters add depth to a story, and great actors leave their imprint with the audience.
Nicholas Lea
#79. I had the privilege of working with so many great actors over the years.
James Arness
#80. To tell a strong story with real taste of an epic tragedy needs great actors.
Luiz Bolognesi
#81. 'King Lear,' I've been seeing all my life. I mean, the great actors of my lifetime ... to join their company, as it were, by playing a part that's challenged them, is one of the great joys of being an actor who does the classics.
Ian McKellen
#82. You don't need great actors to do a 3D picture. All of this condescending stuff that they put out? "Oh, we will always need actors." Bullshit! They are able to take anybody and put some markers on them, and have them walk through an empty room. Then they paint in the background.
William Friedkin
#83. When we are confronted with death, we become great actors. Great actors, nothing more.
Sait Faik Abasiyanik
#84. I feel like I have just been really, really lucky to meet some of the most successful and great actors alive today.
Troye Sivan
#86. Listen, I like great actors. You can be a movie star without being a great actor - this has been proved several times - and I like my casts to have great actors. Acting is more important to me than being a star.
Jose Padilha
#87. I miss working with great actors, working with great directors.
Pauly Shore
#88. Where solitude endeth, there beginneth the market-place; and where the market-place beginneth, there beginneth also the noise of the great actors, and the buzzing of the poison-flies.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#89. It's eighty percent script and twenty percent you get great actors. There's nothing else to it.
William Wyler
#90. I love Ice Cube and Charlie Day. They're brilliant men, great actors and very funny people.
Tracy Morgan
#91. The great actors are the luminous ones. They are the great conductors of the stage.
Ethel Barrymore
#92. I love being around great actors and film-makers, and I try to hide the fact that I'm in awe of them.
Jessica Chastain
#93. I'm just looking for things to steal [on working with great actors]. It's like going back to acting school. When you're around people that do it well and you get your head out of your ass, you can really learn something.
Benjamin Walker
#94. It's really nice to be able to do something that you've never done. I think that's the gift of being an actor because I get to play a cop, a racist cop and I've never done that before. It's nice to inhabit these other worlds especially when you get to work with great actors.
Matt Dillon
#95. I don't like improv at all. It terrifies me. I like to know exactly what I'm going to say. Being surprised does make me a better actor. Anytime I'm afraid of something that makes me rise to the occasion, it scares me, but it's what makes great actors - being in the moment.
Jesse Tyler Ferguson
#96. The thing is, that great actors are everywhere. They're everywhere. They're doing good parts on television. They're doing television commercials. They're doing local theater. There are so few opportunities.
David Fincher
#97. Doing 'Young Adult' was really reassuring to me in a lot of ways. It confirmed a lot of suspicions I had about great actors.
Patton Oswalt
#98. I'm lucky to just be a working actor. There are so many great actors out there and I'm just lucky to have gotten work.
Chris Messina
#99. Patchway had the enviable countryman's capacity, which is shared only by great actors, of standing by and saying nothing, and yet existing, large, present, and at ease.
Iris Murdoch
#100. Luckily, I had that experience on 'Homeland,' to work with these unreal people who are unbelievably talented, great actors.
Diego Klattenhoff
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
