Top 1200 Stage Actors Quotes & Sayings

I did theatre when it was not considered prudent for film actors to be seen on stage.

Once, and only once, I walked on stage and my mind went utterly blank! I had no idea why I was there! My fellow actors had to rescue me. I was very young and new to the business, so I'm glad it didn't give me stage fright for the rest of my life!

My advice to young actors is probably to do some theatre; definitely do that. I keep running into these actors who have never been on stage, and it's invaluable for an actor. What you will learn about yourself is huge.

Some actors don't even read the stage directions at all.

I also sort of find the idea that not only do actors want to please when they're onstage, I find actors really want to please off stage a lot of the time, don't they?

The whole concept of stage fright is fascinating. Actors get stage fright, but they wouldn't be on the stage in the first place if they just succumbed to it. There's this love/hate relationship with the spotlight.

What I found out about stage is that there is such a camaraderie between the actors.

The crossover wasn't happening. TV actors were TV actors, and film and stage actors were a whole different thing. And now there's just a lot of crossover.

I find the theatre faintly embarrassing for the actors performing on stage. It seems rather showy-off in an undignified way.

On stage, I have felt most fulfilled as a playwright, for everything I create gets to grow and evolve with collaboration from directors, actors, and so on.

The world 's a theatre, the earth a stage, Which God and Nature do with actors fill.

I know in Britain with 'Doctor Who' all the classic actors, and the people who you'd really want to, work on the show. I like that the fact that 'Torchwood' has actors that want to be involved from the stage. It has raised our game, and I'm just happy for good actors who want to be in sci-fi shows who love the genre.

As a director, you have to know what actors are doing. You're the one telling them what to do. The actors' job is to come prepared to the set, but sometimes, if they're beginning actors or people who are non-actors, you have to teach them how to act.

Sightseeing was ... based on imaginative invention, like rehearsing your own play in stage sets from which all the actors had fled.

Most actors are either a shower of bloody scruffs or think they should dress like Hamlet off stage.

The computer programmer is a creator of universes for which he alone is the lawgiver. No playwright, no stage director, no emperor, however powerful, has ever exercised such absolute authority to arrange a stage or field of battle and to command such unswervingly dutiful actors or troops.

I love actors, both my parents were actors, and the work with actors is the most enjoyable part of making a film. It's important that they feel protected and are confident they won't be betrayed. When you create that atmosphere of trust, it's in the bag - the actors will do everything to satisfy you.

Britain produces great actors because they learn on stage so know their stuff when they get on a movie set.

It's pretty rare that I watch a movie now without seeing the script in a way that I hate, where I can see the stage directions and the choices that the actors are making.

I love Back Stage. I have lots of theater friends and actors who depend on Back Stage.

Most famous stage actors tactfully fade away.

I'd love to perform with other actors and act with actors, true actors. I would like to be in a movie and have full room for acting.

I've always known actors because my parents are actors on stage and so I lived in a very creative environment when I was a kid. All my life.

That was my original dream, anyway, to be on stage. I think the stage is an actor's place because actors, it belongs to you.

I can tell stories to other actors about the level of aggression on stage in the '70s between actors - it was unbelievable.

I got on stage and I went, "Oh wow. No stage fright." I couldn't do public speaking, and I couldn't play the piano in front of people, but I could act. I found that being on stage, I felt, "This is home." I felt an immediate right thing, and the exchange between the audience and the actors on stage was so fulfilling. I just went, "That is the conversation I want to have."

A symphony is a stage play with the parts written for instruments instead of for actors.

I would like to be able to be both a film actor and a stage actor - to be an American actor in the style of a lot the English actors who do films. They are these wonderful actors who can do everything.

People have an idea that the preacher is an actor on a stage and they are the critics, blaming or praising him. What they don't know is that they are the actors on the stage; he (the preacher) is merely the prompter standing in the wings, reminding them of their lost lines.

I always think the great parts outlive the actors that play them and that's a stage tradition, that goes back hundreds of years and it should be that way.

Stage actors look down on movie actors, movie actors look down on TV actors, and TV actors look down on... mass murderers.

From a very young age, I wanted to get up on stage whenever I went to the theatre - the actors just seemed to be having so much fun. One of my worries about theatre, in fact, is that the actors are quite often having more fun than the audience.

If you've got 15 actors on stage who are all trying to shine a light on themselves, they are all trying to outshine each other. Whereas if you have 14 of those actors trying to shine a light on one person, and each of them is trying to make the other look good, you have a much more interesting process.

I'm one of relatively few stage-trained actors who doesn't much like acting on stage. It feels kind of like riding the Cyclone at Coney Island, which I did when I was eight. When it was all over, I was glad I had done it, but most of the time when it was actually happening, I was just kind of hanging on for dear life.

The pressure is always stepping on stage with actors who are just so well-established. It's a scary thing. I haven't been around the block that many times, especially not on big projects. Dialogue makes things easier. When you start bouncing dialogue off of other actors, it becomes comfortable; it becomes conversational.

Each department of knowledge passes through three stages. The theoretic stage; the theological stage and the metaphysical or abstract stage.

Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage.

You can always pick out stage actors at the Oscars: they know how to walk.

I went to college and stage school, and thought about acting, but... I just don't like actors very much! They're not as fun as musicians.

Stage actors are usually much more conscious of speaking up and making sure that everyone can hear in the back of the theatre; a film actor probably thinks of that a little less. Unfortunately, there's a style of acting going round, especially with the younger actors, where they talk without even moving their lip. Maybe it's because my hearing probably isn't what it was 40 years ago but I'm sitting there going "What did they say"?

Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis.

The normative theoretical claim that a higher stage is philosophically a better stage is one necessary part of a psychological explanation of sequential stage movement.

There are level-headed actors and outlandish actors and financially responsible actors and financially irresponsible actors.

Some people do stage and film. Some people are film actors, and some people are stage actors. I'm quite sure that any of the actors who did the original production of 'August' could have done the film of 'August.' I don't think any of them were particularly surprised when they didn't wind up doing the film.

Film actors are, by nature, more complicated than stage actors.

I make my life with New York stage actors, and I love them. They're the best actors on planet earth.

Actors improvise on the stage and enjoy interacting with audiences.

I started backstage, making the tea, looking after the actors, doing stage management for two years.

I hear about actors being exterior actors and actors being instinctual actors and I always think it's crap. Anybody who knows anything about it knows that good actors do both - they do inside-outward and they do outside-inward. You can't not do both.

I could not separate myself off stage from myself on stage, as so many actors can.

There's so much energy that's needed, for every stage of the process, so I don't want to do something that I'm bored by with characters that I don't like or actors that aren't going to surprise you.

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.

The staff, stage managers, ushers all behaved as if they respected the actors.

There are a lot of actors - I'm probably one - who are most at home when they're on stage.

Throughout the entire history of philosophy, philosophers have sought to discover what man is - or what human nature is. But Sartre believed that man has no such eternal nature to fall back on. It is therefore useless to search for the meaning of life in general. We are condemned to improvise. We are like actors dragged onto the stage without having learned our lines, with no script and no prompter to whisper stage directions to us. We must decide for ourselves how to live.

There are so many stage actors on TV but you wouldn't know they were stage actors. And film and TV actors are going to the stage as well, so the crossover is great now.

I love stage actors. The pool of world class actors that have done theater [is big], there's a higher opportunity of grabbing somebody from that pool.

Where I teach students in drama school, there's a course called Dramatics. In this course, all students must put on a play. However, acting majors are not supposed to act. They can write the play, for example, and the writers may work on stage art. Likewise, stage art majors may become actors, and in this way you put on a show.

Stage is the ultimate test; I like watching established screen actors on stage to see if they can really do it. But it's great to have a healthy mixture of the two. Film is so technical: there's something very particular about the relationship between you and the camera. It took a long time for me to get good on film.

There is a difference when you work with actors who have worked on the stage. When we're out there in front of an audience eight times a week, you can't do it on your own.