You don't know the difference between truth and make-believe. You never stop acting. It's second nature to you. You act when there's a party here. You act to the servants, you act to father, you act to me. To me you act the part of the fond, indulgent, celebrated mother. You don't exist, you're only the innumerable parts you've played. I've often wondered if there was ever a you or if you were never anything more than a vehicle for all these other people that you've pretended to be. When I've seen you go into an empty room I've sometimes wanted to open the door suddenly, but I've been afraid to in case I found nobody there.
I am proud to have been in a business that gives pleasure, creates beauty, and awakens our conscience, arouses compassion, and perhaps most importantly, gives millions a respite from our so violent world.
John Dorian: — You're an actor.
Janitor: — You're a fireman... What are we doing?
John Dorian: — Game over, Klaus. I saw you in «The Fugitive».
Janitor: — Oh, yeah. I was in a Harrison Ford movie, but I chose this life instead. It's a little more glamorous.
Dr. Bob Kelso: — Hey, champ. There's some vomit on the back steps with your name on it.
Janitor: — That's my cue. Action!
John Dorian: — Cut.
You try to find things that are challenging and interesting and hopefully it will be the same to the audience.
— Do you think there might be something for me?
— On thousands of actors ahead of you dying of the plague.
We only have so much to give, don’t we? And up there I’m not myself, or perhaps more correctly I’m a succession of selves. We must all be a profound mixture of selves, don’t you think? To me, acting is first and foremost intellect, and only after that, emotion. The one liberates the other, and polishes it. There’s so much more to it than simply crying or screaming or producing a convincing laugh. It’s wonderful, you know. Thinking myself into another self, someone I might have been, had the circumstances been there. That’s the secret. Not becoming someone else, but incorporating the role into me as if she was myself. And so she becomes me.
— You're Norma Desmond! You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big!
— I am big. It's the pictures that got small.
— Of all the Christmas pageants I have ever seen, this was by far the most recent.
— Ha, ha. For God's sakes, Sam. I've got teenage girls that are playing the Three Wise Men. What'd you expect?
— Teenage boys?
— I thought they did fine.
— It was the first nativity where Joseph stares at the Wise Men's tits all night.
— Harvey, come on. Opera is so passé.
— You're not understanding the spectacle of it, the bigger than life emotions.
— The bigger than life emotions?
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