‘Character actor’ is a technical term denoting a clever stage performer who cannot act, and therefore makes an elaborate study of the disguises and stage tricks by which acting can be grotesquely simulated. George Bernard Shaw, Dramatic Opinions and Essays
Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances. Sanford Meisner
Find in yourself those human things which are universal. Sanford Meisner
The best acting is instinctive. It’s not intellectual. It’s not mechanical. It’s instinctive. Craig MacDonald
Show me a great actor and I’ll show you a lousy husband. Show me a great actress, and you’ve seen the devil. W C Fields
I never said all actors are cattle. What I said was all actors should be treated like cattle. Alfred Hitchcock
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. Stephen Sondheim
Make them laugh, make them cry, and hack to laughter. What do people go to the theatre for? An emotional exercise. I am a servant of the people. I have never forgotten that. Mary Pickford
To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart;
To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold,
Live o’er each scene, and be what they behold:
For this the Tragic Muse first trod the stage. Alexander Pope, Prologue to Addison’s Cato
I’ve reached a point in my life where it's the little things that matter ... I was always a rebel and probably could have got much farther had I changed my attitude. But when you think about it, I got pretty far without changing attitudes. I’m happier with that. Veronica Lake
What is a normal childhood? We weren’t rich, we were pretty middle-class. My dad survived from job to job; with him taking care of so many relatives, he couldn’t save any money. Charlie Sheen
We all think we know Audrey Hepburn. The ultimate style icon. The star of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. An Oscar winner at just twenty-four. Darcey Bussell’s Looking for Audrey, BBC 2014
‘Naturally, we peeped. We saw the grey uniforms of German soldiers on foot. They all held machine-guns. The next thing we know they had taken control of the town.’ ibid. Audrey Hepburn's war diary
Audrey Hepburn died on 20th January 1993. ibid.
I’m a con artist in that I’m an actor. I make people believe something is real when they know perfectly well it isn’t. John Lithgow
When I was still a boy, before they cut my balls off with a hot knife ... I travelled with a group of actors through the Free Cities. They taught me that each man has a role to play. The same is true at court; I am the Master of Whisperers. My role is to be sly, obsequious, and without scruples (smiles and shrugs). I am a good actor, my Lord. Game of Thrones s1e9: Baelor, Varys, HBO 2011
I’m always willing to endure humiliation on behalf of my characters. Ben Stiller
Simon: You know Bruce Lee’s not really dead, don’t you? Yeah, it’s in a book. What he did was he faked his own death so that he could work undercover for the Hong Kong police, infiltrating drugs gangs and the Triads.
Gareth: Yeah, I reckon that’s true.
Tim: Yeah, I reckon that’s true. Because if you were gonna send someone undercover to investigate the Triads, you’d probably want the world’s most famous Chinese film star. The Office s2e4: Motivation, BBC 2002
Overnight [Rudolph] Valentino became one of the silent-era film’s biggest stars. The Italian Americans: Becoming Americans 1910-1930, PBS 2015
Meet Marlene Dietrich: she is Shanghai Lily – a professional user of men … She is a goddess. Screen Goddesses: Arena ***** BBC 2012
In its golden age it was truly a mass entertainment. Everybody could enter the temple as if they were participating in a new religion. ibid.
Goddesses can also punish and destroy, they can be jealous and spiteful. In Mata Hari the infamous spy is played by Greta Garbo. ibid.
Lillian Gish … lit like a saint: Orphans of the Storm (D W Griffith 1912) ibid.
It starred Clara Bow as a shop-girl. ibid.
Gloria Swanson: Queen Kelly 1929 ... Sunset Boulevard. ibid.
Greta Garbo: Flesh and the Devil 1927. ibid.
In Queen Christina (1933) Garbo was at her most iconic. ibid.
Garbo made her last movie in 1941. ibid.
Marlene Dietrich: The Blue Angel: sleazy bar-room singer Lola-Lola. ibid.
Ecstasy 1933: the Austrian actress once called the most beautiful woman in the world – Hedy Lamarr … Lamarr was brought to America by MGM. ibid.
Mae West: (I’m No Angel 1933) ‘When I’m good I’m very good. But when I’m bad I’m better.’ ibid.
Jean Harlow: Hell’s Angels (1930): ‘Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable?’ ibid.
Jean Harlow – the blonde bombshell. ibid.
Bette Davis & Joan Crawford were said to be screen rivals – their currency was power and willpower. Bette Davis was a supreme technician of screen acting. ibid.
In All About Eve Davis is usurped by a younger woman. ibid.
Ingrid Bergman was another kind of goddess altogether. ibid.
Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City revealed unflinchingly the terrible consequences of the Nazi occupation. ibid.
Director and star become lovers. When the already married Bergman also became pregnant she was exiled from Hollywood … She stuck with Rossellini. ibid.
Dark thrillers dubbed Film Noir – they brought to the screen a dangerous type of goddess. ibid.
Barbara Stanwyck’s glamour and her fast wit. ibid.
In The Big Sleep Lauren Bacall gives Humphrey Bogart as good as she gets. ibid.
No-one could match the actress dubbed the Love Goddess – Rita Hayworth as Gilda. ibid.
She removes a single glove as only a screen goddess can. ibid.
Brigitte Bardot: ‘I want to be myself’ (And God Created Woman 1956). ibid.
Sophia Loren. ibid.
Grace Kelly really did walk in beauty … she might have been a goddess come to Earth – can we be sure she wasn’t? ibid.
Audrey Hepburn … European chic. ibid.
In George Stevens’ A Place in the Sun (1951) Elizabeth Taylor was cast as the rich girl. ibid.
Elizabeth Taylor: Cleopatra … the budget soared from two to forty-four million dollars. ibid.
The studio’s last great sensation – Marilyn Monroe. ibid.
Louise Brooks was rediscovered and elevated to the status of a cult icon: 1929 Lulu in Pandora’s Box. ibid.
Pandora’s Box: Louise Brooks simply exists. In Pandora’s Box Lulu brings down all who fall for her … Brooks completes her seduction with a devastating smile of erotic triumph … This is the ultimate quality of a screen goddess. ibid.
On the night of June 29th 1967 Jayne Mansfield set out by car to New Orleans … ‘The three adults in the front sea were killed instantly; Ms Mansfield was decapitated.’ Arena: Blondes, news report, BBC 1999
‘I began to not like what I saw. And I told her that. Really this wasn’t what I’d bargained for.’ ibid. ex-husband
‘She was an immediately Broadway hit. A sensation.’ ibid. historian
Jayne and Mickey get married January 13th 1958. ibid.
‘On screen she was bigger than Garbo, bigger than anybody. But off screen she disappeared like an over-exposed negative.’ Clara Bow: Hollywood’s Lost Screen Goddess ***** Louis Brooks
Clara Bow: silent movie star. The It girl. Once she was the queen of Hollywood. ibid.
‘Her movies were box-office gold.’ ibid.
1922: Beyond the Rainbow: her scenes didn’t make the final cut. ibid.
‘She is so alive on camera.’ ibid.