Unthinking people speak of the motion picture as the medium of "action"; the truth is that the stage is the medium of action while... the screen is the medium of reaction. It is through identification with the person acted upon on the screen, and not with the person acting, that the film builds up its oscillating power with the audience. This is understood instinctively by expert film-makers, but to my knowledge it has never been formulated. At any emotional crisis in a film, when a character is saying something which profoundly affects another, it is to this second character that the camera instinctively roves, perhaps in close-up; and it is then that the hearts of the audience quiver and open in release, or rock with laughter or shrink with pain, leap to the screen and back again in swift-growing vibrations. The great actors of the stage are actors; of the screen, re-actors.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ibsen is like this room where we are sitting, with all the tables and chairs. Do I care whether you have twenty or twenty-five lin...ks on your chain? Hedda Gabler, Nora and the rest: it is not that I want! I want Rome and the Coliseum, the Acropolis, Athens; I want beauty, and the flame of life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I know that if I'd had to go and take an exam for acting, I wouldn't have got anywhere. You don't take exams for acting, you take ...your courage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Today, San Francisco has experienced a double tragedy of incredible proportions. As acting mayor, I order an immediate state of mo...urning in our city. The city and county of San Francisco must and will pull itself together at this time. We will carry on as best as we possibly can.... I think we all have to share the same sense of shame and the same sense of outrage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The essence of acting is the conveyance of truth through the medium of the actor's mind and person. The science of acting deals wi...th the perfecting of that medium.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers hi...mself a valid critic.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[If not re-elected in 1864] then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the el...ection and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he can not possibly save it afterwards.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To one who is accustomed to thinking a lot, every new thought that he hears or reads about immediately appears as a link in a chai...n.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »