“They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.”
“Actors often behave like children, and so we're taken for children. I want to be grown up.”
“The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful -- my personal life suffers.”
“If a farmer fills his barn with grain, he gets mice. If he leaves it empty, he gets actors.”
“It's a business you go into because your an egocentric. It's a very embarrassing profession.”
“I never said all actors are cattle, what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.”
“I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don't remember ever having seen one weep.”
“There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.”
“Insecurity, commonly regarded as a weakness in normal people, is the basic tool of the actor's trade.”
“Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.”
“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
“An actor who knows his business ought to be able to make the London telephone directory sound enthralling.”
“While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.”
“Show me a great actor and I'll show you a lousy husband. Show me a great actress, and you've seen the devil.”
“I have tried to be as eclectic as I possibly can with my professional life, and so far it's been pretty fun.”
“The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays that part.”
“A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar -- you pretend it's not there.”
“I just stopped playing bitches on wheels and peoples' mothers. I have only a few more years to kick up my heels!”
“Mr. Clarke played the King all evening as though under constant fear that someone else was about to play the Ace.”
“You name it and I've done it. I'd like to say I did it my way. But that line, I'm afraid, belongs to someone else.”
“A man who strains himself on the stage is bound, if he is any good, to strain all the people sitting in the stalls.”
“To grasp the full significance of life is the actor's duty, to interpret it is his problem, and to express it his dedication.”
“The most minor gifts and not a very high class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four.”
“Acting deals with very delicate emotions. It is not putting up a mask. Each time an actor acts he does not hide; he exposes himself.”
“Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.”
“Acting provides the fulfillment of never being fulfilled. You're never as good as you'd like to be. So there's always something to hope for.”
“Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.”
“Oh! it offends me to the soul to hear a robust periwig-pated fellow, tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings.”
“More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.”
“For the theatre one needs long arms; it is better to have them too long than too short. An artiste with short arms can never, never make a fine gesture.”