Acting is an activity in which a story is told by means of its enactment by an actor or actress who adopts a character and it is not easy. It involves a broad range of skills and they have many different souls and many different body. Inspirational acting quotes will uncover some secret recipe for success and give you the motivation to live the life of passion.

If you’re searching for top quotes and sayings that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of inspirational art quotes, famous music quotes, and great reading quotes.

Acting Quotes

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. – Rodney Dangerfield

Acting is magical. Change your look and your attitude, and you can be anyone. – Alicia Witt

Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances. – Sanford Meisner

Always, always, always believe in yourself. Because if you don’t, then who will, sweetie? – Marilyn Monroe

An actor is a fool for God. – Gerardine Clark

If you get a chance to act in a room that somebody else has paid rent for, then you’re given a free chance to practice your craft. – Philip Seymour Hoffman

If all the circumstances of acting are made too easy, then there’s no grain of sand to make the pearl. – Peter Sarsgaard

If you live in the past that’s depression, and if you live in the future that’s anxiety. So you have no choice but to live in the present. – Sarah Silverman

If you risk nothing, then you risk everything. – Geena Davis

You’re not going there to get a job. You’re going there to present what you do. – Bryan Cranston

Goals on the road to achievement cannot be achieved without discipline and consistency. – Denzel Washington

Giving voice to characters that have no other voice that’s the great worth of what we do. – Meryl Streep

It’s important to say that the more challenging a scene is, in a way, the more fun it is because the more of my job I get to do. – Daniel Radcliffe

For me, our job as artists is to serve the story, serve the director, and serve the fellow actors. And if you do that, by osmosis you’re serving yourself because you’ll get the best out of yourself. – David Oyelowo

If you’re an actor, even a successful one, you’re still waiting for the phone to ring. – Kevin Bacon

My thought process has always been, I’m excited to show you what my version of this story would look like. You’re going to be able to get a little condensed show. That took the pressure off getting the job. – Tituss Burgess

Without wonder and insight, acting is just a business. With it, it becomes creation. – Bette Davis

I’ve always approached things with hunger and just enough fear. Plenty of confidence, you know, but just enough fear to work extra hard. Paralyzing fear does nothing, but the kind of fear that makes you nervous enough to really be aware and focused? I like that kind of fear. – Queen Latifah

Acting helped me as I was growing up. It helped me learn about myself, helped me travel, helped me understand life, express myself, all those wonderful things. So, I’m very, very grateful; it’s a fun job. It’s a luxury. – Angelina Jolie

Learn to live your life there’s no recipe for it. You can’t go to acting school to learn to be a deep person with a lot of experience to draw from; you can only become that person by feeling, by getting hurt, by feeling incredibly happy, by seeing the world; those are the things that make you richer as a person and give you a much bigger bank to draw from when you bring characters to life. – Pablo Schreiber

We think too much and feel too little. – Charlie Chaplin

When you’re in a theater, it’s about reaching the back rows. When you have a camera in your face, it’s just about knowing the size of the room. – Corey Stoll

An actor is at most a poet and at least an entertainer. – Marlon Brando

The best acting is instinctive. It’s not intellectual, it’s not mechanical, it’s instinctive. – Craig MacDonald

That’s what makes acting so attractive. You get to break all your own rules. – Gerardine Clark

Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life. – Bette Davis

Acting is standing up naked and turning around very slowly. – Rosalind Russell

Acting is not about being someone different. It’s finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there. – Meryl Streep

Good acting – real acting is impossible to spot. Do you ever catch talents like Robert Duvall or Kathy Bates acting? No. I defy you to show me where. – William Esper

Stop explaining yourself. Shut up and act! – Craig MacDonald

Find in yourself those human things which are universal. – Sanford Meisner

The more personal, the more universal. – Gary Ballinger

An actor has to burn inside with an outer ease. – Michael Chekhov

Use what you know. Don’t worry about what you don’t know. – Michael Shurtleff

The actor has to develop his body. The actor has to work on his voice. But the most important thing the actor has to work on is his mind. – Stella Adler

An ounce of behavior is worth a pound of words. – Sanford Meisner

Conflict is what creates drama. The more conflict actors find, the more interesting the performance. – Michael Shurtleff

If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable. – Jack Lemmon

There’s only one reason why a character drinks: to seek confrontation. To fight for what they want in ways normally denied them. – Michael Shurtleff

My job is usually to express emotion as freely as possible. – Meryl Streep

I’m curious about other people. That’s the essence of my acting. I’m interested in what it would be like to be you. – Meryl Streep

I think the most liberating thing I did early on was to free myself from any concern with my looks as they pertained to my work. – Meryl Streep

I believe in imagination. I did Kramer vs. Kramer before I had children. But the mother I would be was already inside me. – Meryl Streep

All an actor has is their blind faith that they are who they say they are today, in any scene. – Meryl Streep

The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays that part. – Miguel de Cervantes

Actors think more with their hearts than with their heads. – William Esper

Show me a great actor and I’ll show you a lousy husband. Show me a great actress, and you’ve seen the devil. – W. C. Fields

Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made. – George Burns

The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen. – W.H. Auden

Actors die so loud. – Henry Miller

I love acting. It is so much more real than life. – Oscar Wilde

If I wasn’t an actor, I’d be a secret agent. – Thornton Wilder

The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place. It is the place people come to see the truth about life and the social situation. – Stella Adler

I’m a skilled professional actor. Whether or not I’ve any talent is beside the point. – Michael Caine

Acting in theatre or television or screen is only for the irrecoverably diseased, those so smitten with the need that there is no choice. – Michael Shurtleff

I wanted my dad to be proud of me, and I fell into acting because there wasn’t anything else I could do, and in it I found a discipline that I wanted to keep coming back to, that I love and I learn about every day. – Tom Hardy

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. – George Bernard Shaw

There’s nothing more boring than unintelligent actors, because all they have to talk about is themselves and acting. There have to be other things. – Tim Robbins

Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one. – Stella Adler

I think your self emerges more clearly over time. – Meryl Streep

I went through this realization that acting, at its heart, is the ability to manipulate your own emotions. – Scarlett Johansson

I need to go where people are serious about acting. – Meryl Streep

The work will stand, no matter what. – Meryl Streep

Acting is the least mysterious of all crafts. Whenever we want something from somebody or when we want to hide something or pretend, we’re acting. Most people do it all day long. – Marlon Brando

I’ve always considered myself to be just average talent and what I have is a ridiculous insane obsessiveness for practice and preparation. – Will Smith

The art of acting consists in keeping people from coughing. – Ralph Richardson

Acting is a marvelous profession … If you can spend enough time playing other people, you don’t have to think too much about your own character and motivations. – Dean Koontz

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

Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? – Groucho Marx

Acting is a nice childish profession pretending you’re someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself. – Katharine Hepburn

To me, acting is the most logical way for people’s neuroses to manifest themselves, in this great need we all have to express ourselves. – James Dean

People acting in their own self-interest is the fuel for all the discovery, innovation, and prosperity that powers the world. – John Stossel

Acting is not about being famous, it’s about exploring the human soul. Annette Bening

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

There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves. – Will Rogers

Acting is always a challenge. – Robert Downey

Having done 300 television shows and almost 60 movies, I’m tired of having guys who are younger than some sandwiches I’ve had, telling me to turn left at the couch. There’s no appreciation of actors and no sense of history. – Burt Reynolds

Film acting is one of the only industries where you’re criticized for working hard. In any other industry, it’s considered a quality and something to behold. – Nicolas Cage

Acting is a question of absorbing other people’s personalities and adding some of your own experience. – Paul Newman

Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’! – Audrey Hepburn

Great acting is not easy; anyone who says it is is either shallow or a charlatan. And one of the hardest things about acting is admitting that it is hard. – Robert Cohen

Acting is half shame, half glory. Shame at exhibiting yourself, glory when you can forget yourself. – John Gielgud

Acting is not being emotional but being able to fully express emotion. – Kate Reid

I’ll never, ever be full. I’ll always be hungry. Obviously, I’m not talking about food. Growing up, I had nothing for such a long time. Someone told me a long time ago, and I’ve never forgotten it, ’Once you’ve ever been hungry, really, really hungry, then you’ll never, ever be full. – Dwayne Johnson

Acting is a spiritual quest to touch human beings. – Larry Moss

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. – Washington Irving

Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life. George Eliot

Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do. – Bruce Lee

Acting is happy agony. – Jean-Paul Sartre

Acting is a sport. On stage you must be ready to move like a tennis player on his toes. Your concentration must be keen, your reflexes sharp; your body and mind are in top gear, the chase is on. Acting is energy. In the theatre people pay to see energy. – Clive Swift

Acting doesn’t bring anything to a text. On the contrary, it detracts from it. – Marguerite Duras

Take a deep breath, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again. – Frank Sinatra

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets. – Ellen Barkin

Acting is not about dressing up. Acting is about stripping bare. The whole essence of learning lines is to forget them so you can make them sound like you thought of them that instant. – Glenda Jackson

“I try to make sense of things. Which is why, I guess, I believe in destiny. There must be a reason that I am as I am. There must be. – Robin Williams

I really think that effective acting has to do literally with the movement of molecules. – Charlotte Whitton

I must say that acting was good training for the political life that lay ahead of us. – Nancy Reagan

Well I have a microphone and you don’t so you will listen to every damn word I have to say! – Adam Sandler

My parents never looked at my acting as a career. They saw it as a way to help provide for the household. – Paul Walker

As always, with acting, you can’t be too self-conscious. You shouldn’t care about what people are thinking about you at the time because they’re not caring about you, they’re caring about the character. – Freddie Highmore

My own dreams fortunately came true in this great state. I became Mr. Universe; I became a successful businessman. And even though some people say I still speak with a slight accent, I have reached the top of the acting profession. – Arnold Schwarzenegger