Quotes on Theatre Acting

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

A true priest is aware of the presence of the altar during every moment that he is conducting a service. It is exactly the same way that a true artist should react to the stage all the time he is in the theater. An actor who is incapable of this feeling will never be a true artist.

Acting is standing up naked and turning around very slowly.

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.

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.

The main factor in any form of creativeness is the life of a human spirit, that of the actor and his part, their joint feelings and subconscious creation.

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action.

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you-trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say, the whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.

Unless the theatre can ennoble you, make you a better person, you should flee from it.

Remember this practical piece of advice: Never come into the theatre with mud on your feet. Leave your dust and dirt outside. Check your little worries, squabbles, petty difficulties with your outside clothing - all the things that ruin your life and draw your attention away from your art - at the door.

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc'd it to you, trippingly on the tongue.

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

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her?