I'm an actor; I have made my living by acting, and I almost think I owe it to the public to express my feelings and not as a character on a screen but as myself.
Kirk DouglasRead
I didn't start out to be a movie star. I started out to be an actor.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the importance of passion over fame in pursuing one's craft.
Kirk Douglas emphasizes that his initial motivation was not to achieve stardom but to pursue the craft of acting. This distinction underscores the value of dedication and authenticity in the arts, focusing on the love for the art itself rather than the accolades that come with it.
Themes
ActingPassionAuthenticityCareerDedication
In practice
Example use cases
During an acting workshop to inspire students about the craft of acting.
More from Kirk Douglas
All quotes βCancer does give you a new rejuvenation. I know what it's like to be down. I lost a couple of good friends - Larry Hagman and Nick Ashford - who had the same type of cancer that I did, and that makes you think.
Kirk DouglasRead
Too often, I have not been what I wanted to be; I've succumbed to pressures. Yes, I have. The things I've done that I liked, I've always done against advice.
Kirk DouglasRead
People are composed of many things, and in my work, what influences me is the complexity of people - the chiaroscuro of dark and light. When I play a strong guy, I try to find, where is he weak? And, conversely, when I play a weak guy, where is he strong?
Kirk DouglasRead
When you have a stroke, you must talk slowly to be understood, and I've discovered that when I talk slowly, people listen. They think I'm going to say something important!
Kirk DouglasRead
My four sons all knew I was a Jew, but they were allowed to be whatever they wanted to be. The only thing important to me was that they be good people who help other people, because all religion should try to make you a better person and a more caring person. Whenever religion does that for you, it's a good religion.
Kirk DouglasRead
Similar quotes
Fiction is such a world of freedom, it's wonderful. If you want someone to fly, they can fly.
Alice WalkerRead
I can't be alone among fiction writers in regarding the world, so much weirder than anything we could make up, as beating us at our own game or in racking my brains over what could possibly constitute a contribution when novels pale before the newspaper.
Lionel ShriverRead
Beautiful forms and compositions are not made by chance, nor can they ever, in any material, be made at small expense. A composition for cheapness and not excellence of workmanship is the most frequent and certain cause of the rapid decay and entire destruction of arts and manufacturers.
Josiah WedgwoodRead
What I need to write well is a combination of heat, light and solitude.
A. S. ByattRead
The meaning of a theater event is that none of us could see something so clearly as with the new energy that is brought with the meeting of a theme, actors living it, and an audience gradually entering it to live it with them. At that moment, a certain light appears, revealing what we would never have thought of on our own.
Peter BrookRead
I'm chasing a kind of language that can be unburdened by people's expectations. I think music is the primary model-how close can you get this language to be like music and communicate feeling at the base level in the same way a composition with no words communicates meaning? It might be impossible. Language is always burdened by thought. I'm just trying to get it so it can be like feeling.
Terrance HayesRead