Hi aspiring actor! Your main goal as an actor, is to be the face (and body) of the human condition. Think of yourself as a diplomat for all mankind. The beauty of acting is the ability to play in the role of another human being, representing him/her to the best and most natural of our ability. The acting is communication. You, as an actor, have the honored task of creating (or recreating) life on the stage or in front of a camera. You must be able to reflect all sorts of characters, some of whom may even seem odd or distasteful to you. Thats the challenge and the reward of acting! One of the first actors is believed to be an ancient Greek called Thespis of Icaria (year 12 BC). The skills required to be an actor Acting requires a wide range of skills, including vocal projection, clarity of speech, physical expressivity, emotional facility, a well-developed imagination, and the ability to interpret drama or comedy. Acting also often demands an ability to employ dialects, accents and body language, improvisation, observation and emulation, mime, and training on stage/ film combat. Many actors train at length in special programs or coaches and schools to develop these skills, and today the vast majority of professional actors has undergone extensive combat practice. Even though one actor may have years of training, they always strive for more lessons; the cinematic and theatrical world is always changing and because of this, the actor must stay as up to date as possible. Actors and actresses will often have many coaches and teachers for a full range of training involving, but not limited to, singing, scene-work, monologue techniques, audition techniques, and working with co-actors work. Based on Here is what celebrities say about acting 1. The acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances. ~ Sanford Meisner 2. An actor is a fool for God. ~ Gerardine Clark 4. The best acting is instinctive. Its not intellectual, its not mechanical, its instinctive. ~ Craig MacDonald 5. Thats what makes acting so attractive. You get to break all your own rules. ~Gerardine Clark 6. Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life. ~ Bette Davis 7. Acting is standing up naked and turning around very slowly. ~ Rosalind Russell Acting Quotes 8. Acting is not about being someone different. Its finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there. ~ Meryl Streep 9. 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 10. Stop explaining yourself. Shut up and act! ~ Craig MacDonald Practical Acting Quotes Acting quotes to remember when youre working. 11. Find in yourself those human things which are universal. ~ Sanford Meisner 12. The more personal, the more universal. ~ Gary Ballinger 13. An actor has to burn inside with an outer ease. ~ Michael Chekhov 14. Use what you know. Dont worry about what you dont know. ~ Michael Shurtleff 15. 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 16. An ounce of behavior is worth a pound of words. ~ Sanford Meisner 17. Conflict is what creates drama. The more conflict actors find, the more interesting the performance. ~ Michael Shurtleff 18. If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable. ~ Jack Lemmon 19. Creating relationship is the heart of acting. It is basic. It is essential. ~ Michael Shurtleff 20. Listening is not merely hearing. Listening is reacting. Listening is being affected by what you hear. Listening is active. ~ Michael Shurtleff 21. Whatever you decide is your motivation in the scene, the opposite of that is also true and should be in it. ~ Michael Shurtleff 22. Humor [in a scene] is not jokes. It is that attitude toward being alive without which you would long ago have jumped off the 59th Street Bridge. ~ Michael Shurtleff 23. Every scene you will ever act begins in the middle, and it is up to you, the actor, to provide what comes before. ~ Michael Shurtleff 24. The first step to a better audition is to give up character and use yourself. ~ Michael Shurtleff 25. Competition [in a scene] is healthy. Competition is life. Yet most actors refuse to acknowledge this. They dont want to compete. They want to get along. And they are therefore not first-rate actors. ~ Michael Shurtleff 26. Honesty isnt enough for me. That becomes very boring. If you can convince people what youre doing is real and its also bigger than life -- thats exciting. ~ Gene Hackman 27. Take nothing for granted. Make an emotional discovery as often as you can find one in every scene. Ask yourself: What is new? ~ Michael Shurtleff 28. Theres only one reason why a character drinks: to seek confrontation. To fight for what they want in ways normally denied them. ~ Michael Shurtleff 29. My job is usually to express emotion as freely as possible. ~ Meryl Streep 30. Im curious about other people. Thats the essence of my acting. Im interested in what it would be like to be you. ~ Meryl Streep 31. 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 32. 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 33. All an actor has is their blind faith that they are who they say they are today, in any scene. ~ Meryl Streep 34. The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays that part. ~ Miguel de Cervantes 35. Actors think more with their hearts than with their heads. ~ William Esper Funny Acting Quotes Acting quotes to make you laugh. 36. Show me a great actor and Ill show you a lousy husband. Show me a great actress, and youve seen the devil. ~ W. C. Fields 37. Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, youve got it made. ~ George Burns 38. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen. ~ W.H. Auden 39. Actors die so loud. ~ Henry Miller 40. I love acting. It is so much more real than life. ~ Oscar Wilde 41. If I wasnt an actor, Id be a secret agent. ~ Thornton Wilder Even More Acting Quotes 42. 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 43. Im a skilled professional actor. Whether or not Ive any talent is beside the point. ~ Michael Caine 44. 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 45. 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 46. Theres 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 47. Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one. ~ Stella Adler 48. I think your self emerges more clearly over time. ~ Meryl Streep 49. I need to go where people are serious about acting. ~ Meryl Streep 50. The work will stand, no matter what. ~ Meryl Streep
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 18:01:18 +0000