Top 1200 Lady Macbeth Quotes & Sayings

Explore popular Lady Macbeth quotes.
Last updated on April 14, 2025.
My thirties were ruined by being pregnant. I loved my babies but I had been quite successful before I had them, playing Lady Macbeth and Hedda Gabler, one of my favourite roles.
At Rada, I was cast as Lady Macbeth and tried to do it as seriously as I could, but people still started laughing. I just think they find my face too funny.
Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? - Lady Macbeth — © William Shakespeare
Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? - Lady Macbeth
I was very surprised that they would ask a foreign actress to be Lady Macbeth, but I felt it was an opportunity that I couldn't miss. Having the opportunity to play Shakespeare in English - that wouldn't come twice.
Maybe because Im a nice and sweet person in life, I like the darker roles. The really dark one is Lady Macbeth.
To mankind in general Macbeth and Lady Macbeth stand out as the supreme type of all that a host and hostess should not be.
If you're a woman doing classic theater, the big roles are often destroyers. I've played Hedda Gabler, Lady Macbeth, some of the Chekhovian heroines, Electra, Phaedra - they're all powerful women, but they're forces of negativity.
A great performance like Lady Macbeth may be forgotten. Writing endures.
In Macbeth a lady is restrained from the murder of a king by his resemblance of her father as he slept. Should not all men be restrained from acts of violence and even of unkindness against their fellow men by observing in them something which resembles the Savior of the World? If nothing else certainly, a human figure?
The most likely explanation is the most practical. 'Macbeth' is a very popular play with audiences. If you want to sell out a theater, just mount a production of 'Macbeth'. It's a short play, it's an exciting play, it's easy to understand, and it attracts great acting.
I started to itch to do a play again and 'Macbeth' came to the surface in my mind. I never thought I would do it in a conventional way. A sweaty Macbeth with blood on his arms coming in fresh from the battle doesn't interest me.
I'd make a wonderful Lady Macbeth. I'll wear a pair of platform shoes or something.
Macbeth is a very popular play with audiences. If you want to sell out a theater, just mount a production of Macbeth. It's a short play, it's an exciting play, it's easy to understand, and it attracts great acting.
Any lady who is first lady likes being first lady. I don't care what they say, they like it.
I think an awful lot of the reasons people put forward for not liking Hillary Clinton play into deep-seated, negative female stereotypes: ambition, secrecy, calculating. I mean, that is Lady Macbeth, a kind of cold woman. I don't think that's Hillary. And I don't think people would judge a man in the same way.
I always assumed I would leave drama school and do 'Lady Macbeth' and all sorts of serious things. It just didn't happen.
I think it's so interesting which ways your career can go. I would have been a completely different actor doing a completely different story, and I would have missed 'Lady Macbeth.'
Macbeth's deed is done in horror, and without the faintest desire or sense of glory- done, one may almost say, as if it were an appalling duty; the instant it is finished, its futility is revealed to Macbeth as clearly as its vileness had been revealed beforehand
At my school, which was all boys, I played almost exclusively lady parts. When I say lady parts, I mean parts that were ladies. To actually play lady parts would be weird, even by English standards.
I sometimes have these spells of compulsive truth. But as Lady Macbeth would say, "The fit is momentary."
I was in theater school playing Lady Macbeth and doing these great dramatic parts, and then I got out into the real world and was auditioning for commercials, and just not getting to do anything that felt remotely meaningful.
It's aspirational for me. I've lived as a cat lady. I'm happy to be a cat lady. I'll continue to be a cat lady. Just bring them all to my house, and I'll keep them all, no problem.
I've always wanted to play 'Lady Macbeth' and Strindberg's 'Miss Julie'. — © Olivia d'Abo
I've always wanted to play 'Lady Macbeth' and Strindberg's 'Miss Julie'.
I have such a great thing I want to do with Lady Macbeth - make her one of the witches - and I have this whole thing where she's very light and dressed in pink and dancing Gaelic dances and throwing roses, but then when her husband's coming home, she does incantations and pulls her hair back, puts on a black leather trenchcoat. I mean, I could tear it up if somebody would give me the chance! But do you think someone would ever let me do Lady Macbeth? I doubt it. But I'm going to keep talking about it.
The idea of Macbeth as a conscience-torm ented man is a platitude as false as Macbeth himself. Macbeth has no conscience. His main concern throughout the play is that most selfish of all concerns: to get a good night's sleep.
I want to play Lady Macbeth. I have a big chip on my shoulder about Lady Macbeth. People usually play her as this cold, Greek witch, but there's no evidence of that in the text! I think her intentions are pure.
Snap. Lady with dog. Lady on sofa half-naked. Snap. Naked lady. Lady next to dresser. Lady at window. Snap. Lady on balcony sunlight. (On New Orleans photographer E. J. Bellocq)
Maybe because I'm a nice and sweet person in life, I like the darker roles. The really dark one is Lady Macbeth.
'Lady Macbeth' is a great opportunity for me to prove that maybe the outcome of 'The Falling' was not necessarily a fluke.
Lady Limelight is a jealous lady. She wants all of your attention. You don't have any time to think of anything else but Lady Limelight, because pretty soon that light will be shinning on somebody else. So you better do it while you can.
I'm either the witch or Lady Macbeth of English politics, but someone gotta wear the pants in England when others wearing kilts
With 'Lady Macbeth,' I had two other things offered to me, and they would have also been very fun, but you just have to figure that out. And then you do it.
I always want to abandon myself to my characters, and I never knew if I was actually abandoning myself to Lady Macbeth. I was scared to enter the darkness. Almost every day, I would go back home and be like, 'Oh my God, what am I doing?' I had no idea.
I use those medical gloves that fit very tightly and are disposable for all chopping - peppers, onions, garlic, etc. Very Lady Macbeth, I think.
The biggest thing about 'Lady Macbeth' is the fact that people are so surprised that this woman is so amazing, and really, it shouldn't be so amazing that this incredible character is on our screens.
Harcourt sent my book to Evelyn Waugh and his comment was: “If this is really the unaided work of a young lady, it is a remarkable product.” My mother was vastly insulted. She put the emphasis on if and lady. Does he suppose you’re not a lady? she says.
If you look at the play very closely, this is a thirdhand report of what a wonderful hero Macbeth is for saving Scotland. And in the next scene, he's planning to murder Duncan, and you never really know why or what's behind Macbeth.
My wide eyes make me look much younger without make-up, and although it's fun to have a line in innocence corrupted, I doubt I'll get to play the vampy vixen or a Hedda Gabler or Lady Macbeth.
My war brought me many things; let yours bring you as much. Life is not to be told, call it as loud as you like, it will not tell itself. No one will be much or little except in someone else's mind, so be careful of the minds you get into, and remember Lady Macbeth, who had her mind in her hand. We can't all be as safe as that.
Historically, Macbeth is one of the greatest kings Scotland ever had. He was on the throne for 19 years, and he simply has this dreadful reputation because Shakespeare manipulated history for the benefit of James I, who was paying him to write the play to blacken Macbeth's name.
I'm working for a woman, not a lady. What I hate the most is that "lady" talk. You know, when I read a review, "The lady wears a Bottega Veneta. . . ." What lady? It's the same girls who are walking the runway an hour later elsewhere. But probably it is just the sophistication in our material, the nuance of the color, or the quality of the makeup or the hair that make people think that way. Most people just don't understand simplicity.
Lady Limelight is a jealous lady. She wants all of your attention. You dont have any time to think of anything else but Lady Limelight, because pretty soon that light will be shinning on somebody else. So you better do it while you can.
Hillary Clinton was the first professional First Lady, the first feminist First Lady, the first First Lady from the '60s generation, the first First Lady who was the breadwinner in the family. A lot of America liked and admired that. Some other parts of America found that unappetizing and even kind of threatening. So she became a flashpoint simply for who she was.
I think 'Macbeth' was a play that I've always gotten so much out of. My wife played Lady Macbeth in a play, and I designed it. There are things in there that are just kind of extraordinary.
I want to be evil! I did play Lady Macbeth on stage to Alec Baldwin's Macbeth back in New York in 1998. But I've played a lot of characters who are so righteous and understanding. I don't want to be a goody-goody two-shoes all the time.
I'd really like to play Lady Macbeth. — © Nicola Walker
I'd really like to play Lady Macbeth.
I went to a Jesuit school and they did a William Shakespeare play every year. I got to know Shakespeare as parts I wanted to play. I missed out on playing Ophelia - it was an all-boys school. The younger boys used to play the girls, I played Lady Anne in Richard III and Lady Macbeth, then Richard II and Malvolio. I just became a complete Shakespeare nut, really.
There aren't more lady songwriters for the same reason that there aren't more lady doctors or lady accountants or lady lawyers; not enough women have the time for careers.
The lady was old, the lady was ill. It didn't matter what the lady believed.
Every time 'Lady Macbeth' and everyone involved in the film gets nominated, it's amazing.
It's false advertising to call Mrs. Obama the First Lady. First Woman, maybe, but certainly not a lady. Ann Romney is an actual lady.
[May 1958, on playing Macbeth at age 30 and age 48] When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part.
Hamlet is to Macbeth somewhat as the Ghost is to the Witches. Revenge, or ambition, in its inception may have a lofty, even a majestic countenance, but when it has "coupled hell" and become crime, it grows increasingly foul and sordid. We love and admire Hamlet so much at the beginning that we tend to forget that he is as hot-blooded as the earlier Macbeth when he kills Polonius and the King, cold-blooded as the later Macbeth or Iago when he sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to death.
The picture of me is nearly finished, and I think it is magnificent. The green and blue of the dress is splendid, and the expression as Lady Macbeth holds the crown over her head is quite wonderful.
Today President Obama is in the Middle East. He met the new king of Saudi Arabia. Obama also met Saudi Arabia's first lady, the second lady, third lady, and fourth lady.
The first time I saw 'Macbeth' was not the entire play. It was at acting school, and this student was working on Lady Macbeth's soliloquy. I felt something very special, and I knew then that I would one day experience Lady Macbeth, but I always thought it would be on stage and in French.
I want to play Eva Peron. I've already done a lot of Shakespeare, but I'd like to do Lady Macbeth.
Focus on guilt will always breed fear, and focus on innocence will always breed love. Any time we project guilt onto someone else, we are fortifying the experience of guilt within ourselves. Like blood on Lady MacBeth's hands, we cannot remove our own guilty feelings as long as we are judging others.
I couldn't be more proud to introduce Anne-Marie Duff, a phenomenal actress who is bursting on the world stage, to Broadway audiences as Lady Macbeth. — © Jack O'Brien
I couldn't be more proud to introduce Anne-Marie Duff, a phenomenal actress who is bursting on the world stage, to Broadway audiences as Lady Macbeth.
I once said to someone when I was playing Lady Macbeth and they said: "That's tricky, emotionally, what do you do about murdering your husband's cousin?" And there are, of course, things that aren't in your personal repertoire that you have to somehow understand by reading or watching other things and listening to other people talk about them.
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