Are you a performer in need of inspiration? An actor’s life is paved with challenges, so whether you’re waiting for your next audition or anxiously awaiting a recall, your fellow professional actors are the best people to turn to for advice. From Jodie Comer to Cillian Murphy, we’ve gathered 23 motivational quotes shared by actors from stage and screen to inspire you on your way to success.
Kate Winslet
“You have to keep at it. You do. And if it is the thing that you really believe you want to do with your life, you will get there. You just have to keep going and keep going and keep going. Keep yourself busy; don’t wait for the phone to ring. Fill your life in other areas, because the more you enrich your life, the more enriched you’ll be as an actor.”
Stephen Sondheim
“All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That’s what makes theatre live. That’s why it persists.”
Lupita Nyong’o
“I give myself homework when I have an audition. I give myself goals, and that’s how I check how I’m doing. It can be something simple, like ‘listen’ or ‘find your feet.’ And then afterward it’s an assessment, so in a way it’s not about booking the job or not. It’s about what I learned as an actor about that character.”
Sarah Snook
“I’ve learnt that there’s acting for film, acting for theatre, and acting for an audition.”
James Dean
“Gratification comes in the doing, not in the results.”
Philip Seymour Hoffman
“Study – find all the good teachers and study with them. Get involved in acting to act, not to be famous or for the money. It’s not worth it if you’re just in it for the money. You have to love it.”
Maggie Smith
“I like the ephemeral thing about theatre. Every performance is like a ghost – it’s there and then it's gone.”
Cillian Murphy
“A director, I forget who, told me that it takes 30 years to make an actor. And I believe that. You have to learn your craft, learn your trade – and also you have to live a life and experience things.”
Naomi Ackie
“Once you really understand what the craft is and what you can offer to it, then there’s no need to give up. You might just have to tailor things a bit.”
Terrence Mann
“Movies will make you famous, television will make you rich – but theatre will make you good.”
Jodie Comer
“You have to be confident enough to pick yourself up and go to 30 meetings and be told no every time and not take that to heart.”
David Morrissey
“Leave it in the room. That’s the best piece of advice I can give you. Don’t ever leave an audition and think, maybe I should have tried that. Just do what you have to do and just leave it all there.”
Robert De Niro
“Be in the moment. Period. Just be there. Because if you get all like, ‘Oh, I got to do this big thing,’ it just never works. It just doesn’t work. You’ve just got to let go. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Whatever you do is OK. Just be truthful, honest, real, and that’s all you can ask for.”
Julie Andrews
“Perseverance is failing 19 times and succeeding on the 20th.”
Vanessa Redgrave
“We all come to the theatre with baggage – the baggage of our daily lives, the baggage of our problems, the baggage of our tragedies, the baggage of being tired. It doesn’t matter what age you are. But if our hearts get opened and released – well that is what theatre can do, and does sometimes, and everyone is thankful when that happens.”
Stephen Sondheim
“Success is like failure. It’s how you perceive it. It’s what you do with it, not how you achieve it.”
Kelli O’Hara
“If you act brave, you can seem brave. And if you do it enough, you can talk yourself into believing you’re brave.”
Eddie Redmayne
“I try genuinely, when I’m playing a character, not to judge them and just to inhabit someone as how one sees them. That being said, you also want to make sure that you don’t blur the edges of people too much because humans are naughty and complicated beings.”
Maggie Gyllenhaal
“Acting is a form of self-expression. It’s not becoming someone else, and it’s not playing make believe. It’s about using the fiction of being someone else to express something about yourself.”
David Oyelowo
“For me, our job as artists is to serve the story, serve the director, and serve the fellow actors. And if you do that, by osmosis you’re serving yourself because you’ll get the best out of yourself.”
Samantha Barks
“Do everything you can for yourself. Rehearse. Practise every day. If you can’t sing a certain song, sing it and sing it and sing it. Always throw yourself in the deep end and swim as hard as you can to swim up. And that’s all you can do – take risks and then work really hard because a certain element of things can be luck, but also the harder you work, the luckier you get. If you want something to happen, don’t rely on external things to try to make that happen. Put your best self forward.”
Cynthia Erivo
“If you’re going to go for a thing, there’s no point unless you’re going all the way.”
Tom Hanks
“If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. That’s what makes it great.”
We hope these inspirational quotes about acting for stage and screen help you on the journey. In the end, acting is much more than just performing. It asks you to step beyond yourself and connect through your imagination in the most human ways. Onstage or onscreen, in front of a crowd or behind the scenes – every moment holds a story. One day, you may be asked for a quote to inspire others on their journey. Now, as Sondheim says: It’s time to leave the woods!