Quotes About Acting Shakespeare

#1. When I was about 16 or 17, I had a teacher who took a group of us to the National Theater in Washington, D.C., and I saw Ian McKellen do his one-man show - I think it was called Acting Shakespeare - and it completely bombed me; it put the zap on my brain in a big way.

Edward Norton

#2. I don't make much distinction between being a stand-up comic and acting Shakespeare - in fact, unless you're a good comedian, you're never going to be able to play Hamlet properly.

Ian McKellen

#3. My grief lies all within; and these external manner of laments are merely shadows of the unseen grief that swells with silence in the tortur'd soul.

William Shakespeare

#4. I got an M.F.A. in acting from NYU, and part of our training is to learn how to use swords in combat situations in a performance and Shakespeare plays where you have to fight.

Danai Gurira

#5. My first acting lessons were Shakespeare. The first time I ever started working with a coach was doing scenes from 'Measure for Measure,' which were tough dramatic scenes. And then 'Taming of the Shrew,' which required comedic timing. And that's the kind of stuff I love.

Dave Bautista

#6. At the beginning of my acting career, I worked for two seasons at the RSC and spent a lot of time in the Cotswolds exploring Shakespeare's countryside. It's my kind of English landscape, with its tiny villages and one-room thatched pubs.

Cherie Lunghi

#7. If there is a streak of ham anywhere in an actor, Shakespeare will bring it out.

Robert Benchley

#8. The play's the thing.

William Shakespeare

#9. This is the Jew that Shakespeare drew.

Philip Massinger

#10. All the world's a stage.

William Shakespeare

#11. 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

#12. I've read all of Shakespeare and practiced a lot of lines ... I am going to do Juliet first. Don't laugh. What, with what makeup, costume and camera can do, my acting will create a Juliet who is 14, an innocent virgin.

Marilyn Monroe

#13. I have been doing acting my whole life. I did plays in high school. I take it pretty seriously. I used to do a lot of Shakespeare and Shakespearean festivals and monologues.

Vinny Guadagnino

#14. The king-becoming graces,
As justice, verity, temp'rance, stableness,
Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness,
Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude,
I have no relish of them, but abound
In the division of each several crime,
Acting in many ways.

William Shakespeare

#15. How strange or odd some'er I bear myself,
As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on.

William Shakespeare

#16. When I first started acting, and we would all sit down and talk about Shakespeare and how great it was. I thought well, I suppose it is.

Judy Davis

#17. If I'm serious, yes, I'd like to have done what Shakespeare did ... to act and write. You learn so much from acting. One of our great writers, Alan Bennett, does both supremely well. When I write a story, I tend to speak it aloud as I'm writing it.

Michael Morpurgo

#18. I've been acting since I was six. I actually played a boy when I was six in 'Tommy.' I played Tommy and they put a wig on me. They put up my hair and put this little boy wig on me and that was my first acting experience. Then I did some other professional theater. I did Shakespeare when I was older.

Jojo

#19. Let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them.

William Shakespeare

#20. I play guitar; you'll find me at home strumming 'Vincent' on the guitar. I also read a lot of poetry, and Shakespeare was my first love, which was why I got into acting. A lot of the fighters are intelligent!

Dave Legeno

#21. I've stopped acting, but I don't think I've finished using my voice. I could, and probably will, record the whole of Shakespeare's sonnets. They live at the side of my bed and are my constant companions.

Peter O'Toole

#22. You must write as if Dostoyevsky himself will be reading your novel, and Shakespeare will be acting it out.

Christina Westover

#23. Totus mundus agit histrionem. (All the World's a Stage.)
[Motto of William Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (f. 1599) and its acting company, The King's Men; taken from the first play to be performed on the new stage.]

William Shakespeare

#24. Before acting, I was always attracted to words, to literature - be they the words of Williams, Arthur Miller, Shakespeare or Moliere.

Michael Mando

#25. I can counterfeit the deep tragedian;
Speak and look back, and pry on every side,
Tremble and start, at wagging of a straw,
Intending deep suspicion.

William Shakespeare

#26. Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma or a hideous dream.

William Shakespeare

#27. Happiness was useless to me. It was heartache that filled my purse. What happy man has need of Shakespeare?

Jennifer Donnelly

#28. And to Shakespeare I owe my vision of the world as a theater, wherein all humans are acting out their parts.

James Broughton

#29. Shakespeare in Love ... such smart writing of an alternative view of history, and such beautiful acting. Like most Americans, I'm a sucker for the accent.

Anita Diament

#30. I wanted to play a TV detective because it's a rite of passage; I wanted to experience every area of acting. I haven't done comedy or as much Shakespeare as I had intended.

Olivia Williams

#31. Juilliard is wonderful in that they don't pick just one way of working. They give you a palette. There is method acting. There is a lot of attention to Shakespeare and verse.

Christian Camargo

#32. Like a dull actor now, I have forgot my part, and I am out, Even to a full disgrace.

William Shakespeare

#33. All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.

William Shakespeare

#34. I went to NYU Tisch for undergrad, and it was amazing. My life then was extremely experimental with acting. I did crazy theater where we would be rolling around on the floor. I would be playing grandmothers, and clowns, and all this crazy stuff. Then I would be doing Shakespeare eight hours a day.

Katie Lowes

#35. Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts.

William Shakespeare

#36. It was in India that I started my acting career, courtesy of my parents, long before I set foot on stage in England. They headed a company of travelling players performing Shakespeare up and down the land.

Felicity Kendal

#37. When you're playing Shakespeare, it forces you to think and feel and speak all at the same time, which really is what acting is. It expands your imagination and expands your size of thinking.

Andre Holland