Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British actor Ralph Richardson.
Last updated on December 18, 2024.
Sir Ralph David Richardson was an English actor who, with John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier, was one of the trinity of male actors who dominated the British stage for much of the 20th century. He worked in films throughout most of his career, and played more than sixty cinema roles. From an artistic but not theatrical background, Richardson had no thought of a stage career until a production of Hamlet in Brighton inspired him to become an actor. He learned his craft in the 1920s with a touring company and later the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. In 1931 he joined the Old Vic, playing mostly Shakespearean roles. He led the company the following season, succeeding Gielgud, who had taught him much about stage technique. After he left the company, a series of leading roles took him to stardom in the West End and on Broadway.
You've got to perform in a role hundreds of times. In keeping it fresh one can become a large, madly humming, demented refrigerator.
Acting is the ability to dream on cue.
In music, the punctuation is absolutely strict, the bars and rests are absolutely defined. But our punctuation cannot be quite strict, because we have to relate it to the audience. In other words we are continually changing the score.
Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing.
The most precious things in speech are pauses.
Acting is a strange business; one day it's there, and the next day nowhere to be seen.
The most precious things in speech are the pauses.
If a man without a sense of smell declared that this yellow rose that I hold had no scent, we should know that he is wrong. The defect is in him, not the flower. It is the same with the man who says there is no God. It merely means that he is without the capacity to discern His presence.
I like talking to engineers best. They built bridges, they're very precise, very disciplined, yet I find they have roving minds.
Acting: An art which consists of keeping the audience from coughing.
Actors are the jockeys of literature. Others supply the horses, the plays, and we simply make them run.