Actors' quotes about acting and filmmaking

“I play John Wayne in every part regardless of the character, and I've been doing okay, haven't I?”
John Wayne

“The cinema is truth twenty-four times a second.”
Jean-Luc Godard

“There's only one way to get into pictures if you have as little talent as I have: you have to know somebody.”
Don Siegel

“My status is 8-T- that means I go when the Japs are in the lobby.”

George Jessel

“The most beautiful thing of all is the complete stillness of an audience so intent that it hardly breathes.”
Charles Laughton

“If you stay in front of that camera long enough, it will show you not only what you had for breakfast but who your ancestors were.”
John Barrymore

“We can make badpictures, too... Costs more, but we can make 'em.”
John Huston

“It sure beats working.”

Robert Mitchum

“There is as much difference between the stage and the films as between a piano and a violin. Normally you can't become a virtuoso in both.”
Ethel Barrymore

“By the rhythm of my chewing, how I chewed fast, slow or what have you, I could tell the audience what my character was thinking and feeling.”
Rod Steiger

“I mean, a Mexican boy couldn't be anything else but an Indian.”
Anthony Quinn

“Acting is like a Halloween mask that you put on.”
River Phoenix

“I like that kind of 'straight-faced' comedy. I like to be straight-faced and outrageous.”
Leslie William Nielsen

“Every time I get a script it's a matter of trying to know what I could do with it. I see colors, imagery. It has to have a smell. It's like falling in love. You can't give a reason why.”
Paul Newman

“Acting isn't really a creativeprofession. It's an interpretative one.”
Paul Newman

“I gave up being serious about making pictures around the time I made a film with Greer Garson and she took a hundred and twenty five takes to say ‘no’.”
Robert Mitchum

“I won't quit until I get run over by a truck, a producer or a critic.”
Jack Lemmon

“I don't care how small the parts are, as long as they're good.”
Alan Ladd

“It really doesn't matter whether it's the villain or the hero. Sometimes the villain is the most colorful. But I prefer a part where you don't know what he is until the end.”
Glenn Ford

“When I played drunks I had to remain sober because I didn't know how to play them when I was drunk.”
Richard Burton

“Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life. Quitting acting, that's the sign of maturity.”
Marlon Brando

“You can't show some far off idyllic conception of behavior if you want the kids to come and see the picture.”
James Dean

“My job, as an actor, is to give the director options.”
Johnny Depp

“When you're a movie star and you're young, you are always playing someone who's a better fighter, a better lover, a better everything than you.”
Sir Michael Caine

“Every time you get a movie, you get a medical. So you know, you know you're alright for a couple of weeks.”
Sir Michael Caine