I do not regret one professional enemy I have made. Any actor who doesn't dare to make an enemy should get out of the business.

Bette Davis (1908 - 1989), The Lonely Life, 1962

Acting¹ is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made.

George Burns (1896 - 1996)

Talk low, talk slow, and don't talk too much.

John Wayne (1907 - 1979), Advice on acting

Acting is not being emotional, but being able to express emotion.

Kate Reid

Acting is the most minor² of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four.

Katharine Hepburn (1907 - 2003)

Being a celebrity³ has taught me to hide, but being an actor has opened my soul.

Meryl Streep (1949 - ), Barnard Commencement Speech, 2010

Empathy is at the heart of the actor's art.

Meryl Streep (1949 - ), Barnard Commencement Speech, 2010

One is obliged to do a great deal of kissing in my line of work: air kissing, [butt] kissing, kissing up, and of course actual kissing. Much like hookers, actors have to do it with people we may not like or even know.

Meryl Streep (1949 - ), Barnard Commencement Speech, 2010

Pretending is not just play. Pretending is imagined possibility. Pretending, or acting, is a very valuable life skill and we do it all the time.

Meryl Streep (1949 - ), Barnard Commencement Speech, 2010

While I am overwhelmingly proud of work that I, believe me, did not do on my own, I can assure you that awards have very little bearing on my own personal happiness, my own sense of well-being⁴ and purpose in the world.

Meryl Streep (1949 - ), Barnard Commencement Speech, 2010

Women are better at acting then men. Why? Because we have to be. If successfully convincing someone bigger than you are of something he doesn't want to know is a survival skill, this is how women have survived through the millennia⁵.

Meryl Streep (1949 - ), Barnard Commencement Speech, 2010

There's a rule in acting called, "Don't play the result." If you have a character who's going to end up in a certain place, don't play that until you get there. Play each scene and each beat as it comes. And that's what you do in life: You don't play the result.

Michael J. Fox (1961 - ), Good Housekeeping, June 2011

The most difficult character in comedy is that of a fool, and he must be no simpleton who plays the part.

Miguel de Cervantes (1547 - 1616), Don Quixote, 1605

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.

Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

Acting like someone you're not is exactly what it takes to realize you're capable of more than you ever knew.

Rob Sheridan, Mad Love, The Young and The Reckless, 2011

I enjoy being a highly overpaid actor.

Roger Moore (1927 - )

Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing.

Sir Ralph Richardson (1902 - 1983), quoted in New York Herald⁶ Tribune, May 19, 1946

When a man plays a woman in a dress, you're halfway⁷ there. It's inherently funny. When a woman plays a man, for whatever reason, it's not that instant kind of funny.

Tina Fey, ABC-TV World News Now

You can be a little bit darker and rougher on the stage, partly because when you're in the theater, people have come to see you, and so they kind of know what they're in for. In television, you are sort of sneaking⁸ into people's homes. So, I think you can be a little bit darker on stage.

Tina Fey, Interview from Second City, 2008

We're actors - we're the opposite of people.

Tom Stoppard (1937 - ), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1967)