38 Memorable Quotes From Actors

In the world of cinema, actors have the unique ability to bring characters to life, leaving audiences captivated with their performances and words. From delivering iconic one-liners to sharing profound insights, the quotes of actors often resonate deeply, transcending the screen and embedding themselves in our cultural consciousness. Whether it's a line from a classic film or a personal reflection during an interview, these quotes carry wisdom, emotion, and a glimpse of the personalities behind the performances. Join us as we explore a carefully selected collection of the top 38 memorable quotes from actors, celebrating their impact and inspiration both on and off the screen.

1. “Any actress who appears in public without being well-groomed is digging her own grave.” - Joan Crawford

2. “We're actors — we're the opposite of people!” - Tom Stoppard

3. “We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.” - Tom Stoppard

4. “The actor's life offers, on a daily basis, the simulacrum of love; a mask can be satisfied, or at least consoled, by the echo of what it seeks.” - Salman Rushdie

5. “I really want to play Princess Leia. Stick some big pastries on my head. Now that would be interesting.” - Ewan McGregor

6. “I'm fiercely proud to be Scottish.” - Ewan McGregor

7. “If you're suddenly doing something you don't want to do for four years, just so you've got something to fall back on, by the time you come out you don't have that 16-year-old drive any more and you'll spend your life doing something you never wanted to do in the first place.” - Ewan McGregor

8. “What matters most with any regimen, whether it's to lose weight or stop drinking or smoking, is your willingness to seek help and your desire to say 'no more.” - Ewan McGregor

9. “I fight cynicism. It`s too easy. It`s really boring. It`s much harder to be positive and see the wonder of everything. Cynicism is a bunch of people who aren`t as talented as other people, knocking them because they make them feel even more untalented.” - Ewan McGregor

10. “I`ve got a black woolen hat and it`s got Pervert written across the front of it. It`s the name of the clothing label. And I was with my wife and my baby at the supermarket and I didn`t think. I just put my hat on Clara`s head, because it was cold. And the looks. I couldn`t figure out why I was getting death looks. And then I realized my 10-month old baby`s wearing a hat with the word Pervert written on it and these people were like, `There`s Satan! There`s Satan out with his kid!` And then I made a point of her wearing it every time we went there.” - Ewan McGregor

11. “He`s quite extraordinary with his moves and spins. I think he was a baton girl in a past life [on his co-star Hayden Christensen].” - Ewan McGregor

12. “I won`t buy into the Hollywood thing...I want to be in good movies.” - Ewan McGregor

13. “...as an actor there`s nothing better than a great moody moment to play with nothing to say. It`s so much easier to do because you can really get inside your head.” - Ewan McGregor

14. “Starting with a party scene for 600 cast and end up singing on top of a giant elephant...does it get any better than this?” - Ewan McGregor

15. “I started watching golf for the first time yesterday. I`m really worried about myself. I was actually enjoying it.” - Ewan McGregor

16. “I was with a friend of mine recently who was dying and while he was lying there with his family around his bed, I just knew that was it, that was the best you can hope for in life - to have your family and the people who love you around you at the end.” - Ewan McGregor

17. “People are incredibly rude about it sometimes. Like, `What? You`re married?` Strange reaction to have. Proves what people`s ideas about marriage are. `We`re having a baby.` `What?` As if it`s the end of the world. Of course, it`s the start of a brilliant world.” - Ewan McGregor

18. “The beautiful thing about it is that no two directors or actors work the same way. You also learn not to be afraid of discussion and conflict.” - Ewan McGregor

19. “The most talented people are always the nicest.” - James Caan

20. “I'm not a heroine, I just play heroines. Also psychotics, vamps, orphans, hookers, housewives, and ”on one memorable occasionâ ”a singing rutabaga. It was never my ambition to utilize my extensive dramatic training by playing a musical vegetable. However, as my agent is so fond of pointing out, there are more actors in New York than there are people in most other cities. Translation: Beggars can't be choosers.” - Laura Resnick

21. “Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage.” - Charlie Chaplin

22. “There we were - demented children mincing about in clothes that no one ever wore, speaking as no man ever spoke, swearing love in wigs and rhymed couplets, killing each other with wooden swords, hollow protestations of faith hurled after empty promises of vengeance - and every gesture, every pose, vanishing into the thin unpopulated air. We ransomed our dignity to the clouds, and the uncomprehending birds listened. Don't you see?! We're actors - we're the opposite of people!” - Tom Stoppard

23. “Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull.” - Rod Serling

24. “That's what I love most about writers--they're such lousy actors.” - Vincent H. O'Neil

25. “Any actor who tells you that they have become the people they play, unless they’re clearly diagnosed as a schizophrenic, is bullshitting you.” - Gary Oldman

26. “In all aspects of life, we take on a part and an appearance to seem to be what we wish to be--and thus the world is merely composed of actors.” - Francois de La Rochefoucauld

27. “Difficult for actors to extemporise in nineteenth-century English. Except for Robert Hardy and Elizabeth Spriggs, who speak that way anyway.” - Emma Thompson

28. “Jane reminds us that God is in his heaven, the monarch on his throne and the pelvis firmly beneath the ribcage. Apparently rock and roll liberated the pelvis and it hasn't been the same since.” - Emma Thompson

29. “(On period costume posture coaching:)"We all stand about like parboiled spaghetti being straightened out.” - Emma Thompson

30. “Press conference [on the movie Carrington] yielded the usual crop of daftness. I've been asked if I related personally to Carrington's tortured relationship with sex and replied that no, not really, I'd had a very pleasant time since I was fifteen. This elicited very disapproving copy from the Brits ... No wonder people think we don't have sex in England.” - Emma Thompson

31. “I seem finally to have stopped worrying about Elinor, and age. She seems now to be perfectly normal -- about twenty-five, a witty control freak. I like her but I can see how she would drive you mad. She's just the sort of person you'd want to get drunk, just to make her giggling and silly.” - Emma Thompson

32. “Most of the successful people in Hollywood are failures as human beings.” - Marlon Brando

33. “Seven actors have played Batman on the big screen, and if you can name all seven without reading any further, your youth has been wasted.” - Grant Morrison

34. “I got married because I fell in love with this woman. I had a baby with her because we wanted to have children. But that's not because of some philosophical ideal at all, no.” - Ewan McGregor

35. “Don't ever humiliate a man. If you're gonna have to dress him out, you take him aside and do it that way. That's the one thing I don't like about Hollywood: They go in for public humiliation. You shouldn't do that to a man.” - Rip Torn

36. “To create, I destroyed myself; I made myself external to such a degree within myself that within myself I do not exist except in an external fashion. I am the living setting in which several actors make entrances, putting on several different plays.” - Fernando Pessoa

37. “He seems, in manner and rank, above the class of young men who take that turn; but I remember hearing them say, that the little theatre at Fairport was to open with the performance of a young gentleman, being his first appearance on any stage.—If this should be thee, Lovel!—Lovel? yes, Lovel or Belville are just the names which youngsters are apt to assume on such occasions—on my life, I am sorry for the lad.” - Walter Scott

38. “Today’s generation didn’t want to watch ancient actors reciting the same tired lines. They wanted to see themselves reflected onscreen –rude, raw, entitled. These kids needed to believe that they themselves were only one daring, controversial act away from being up on that screen themselves. ” - Melissa Jo Peltier