Actors' quotes about acting and filmmaking

“Anyone can direct a good picture if he's got a good script.”
Garson Kanin

“I feel very strongly that the director is supposed to be the boss. Art was never created by democracy.”
Charlton Heston

“No comic can be great in films without two things — a great story which gives you a character to play, and a great director.”
Jack Benny

“The best actors do not let the wheels show. This is the hardest kind of acting, and it works only if you look as if you are not acting at all.”
Henry Fonda

“The physical labour actors have to do wouldn't tax an embryo.”
Spencer Tracy

“The biggest disappointment about working in films is that once you realize it's all ridiculous, there's not that much to feel strongly about.”
Sondra Locke

“A lot of young directors really don't understand actors, how to work with them. They're into techniques, effects.”
Robert De Niro

“People chase illusions and these illusions are created by the movies. I want to make things concrete and real and to break down the illusion.”
Robert De Niro

“The relationship between the make-up man and the film actor is that of accomplices in crime.”
Marlene Dietrich

“An epic is the easiest kind of picture to make badly.”
Charlton Heston

“Cinema is the director's medium. It is written even less than it is acted, but it is primarily the director's medium.”
Charlton Heston

“Once I get a hold of a character, get a hold of their essence, I'm just as excited the next time I create it.”
Lily Tomlin

“I was always the guy behind the guy behind the gun.”

Humphrey Bogart

“I'm no actor and I never have been. What people see on the screen is me.”
Clark Gable

“My talent falls within definite limits. I'm not a versatile actress.”
Greta Garbo

“Acting is like roller-skating. Once you know how to do it, it is neither stimulating nor exciting.”
George Sanders

“The important thing for a star is to have an interesting face. He doesn't have to move it very much. Editing and camerawork can always produce the desired illusion that a performance is being given.”
George Sanders

“Acting is a masochistic form of exhibitionism. It is not quite the occupation of an adult.”
Laurence Olivier

“Any good writer, to write a woman, must be able to have some woman in him.”
Richard Brooks

“I'll tell you about those men. They were monsters and pirates and bastards right down to the bottom of their feet, but they loved movies. They loved making movies, they loved seeing movies and they protected the people who worked for them. Some of the jerks running the business now don't even have faces.”

Richard Brooks

“I'm interested in people, the way they behave. Other directors get their effects by showing doorknobs being turned, things like that. I like to concentrate on the actors' faces.”
George Cukor

“It is in the interest of producers to maintain a certain moral standard since, if they don't do this, the immoral films won't sell.”
Jean Renoir

“We are in this business primarily to provide entertainment, but in doing so we do not dodge the issue if we can also provide enlightenment.”
Darryl Francis Zanuck

“I want to shock people into awareness. I don't believe there's any virtue in understatement.”
Ken Russell

“Nothing is too shocking for me. When you tell the story of a man who loses his head, you have to show the head being cut off. Otherwise it's just a dirty joke without a punch line.”
Roman Polanski