Marcel Marceau Quotes

Marcel Marceau was a French actor and mime artist most famous for his stage persona as "Bip the Clown". He referred to mime as the "art of silence" and he performed professionally worldwide for over 60 years. As a youth, he lived in hiding and worked with the French Resistance during most of World War II, giving his first major performance to 3000 troops after the liberation of Paris in August 1944. Following the war, he studied dramatic art and mime in Paris.

In 1959, he established his own pantomime school in Paris, and subsequently set up the Marceau Foundation to promote the art in the U.S. Among his various awards and honours he was made "Grand Officier de la Légion d'Honneur" and was awarded the National Order of Merit in France. He won the Emmy Award for his work on television, was elected member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin and was declared a "National treasure" in Japan. He was friends with Michael Jackson for nearly 20 years and Jackson said he used some of Marceau's techniques in his own dance steps. Wikipedia  

✵ 22. March 1923 – 22. September 2007
Marcel Marceau photo
Marcel Marceau: 13   quotes 8   likes

Famous Marcel Marceau Quotes

“In silence and movement you can show the reflection of people.”

US News & World Report (23 February 1987)

“Chaplin made me laugh and cry without saying a word. I had an instinct. I was touched by the soul of Chaplin — Mime is not an imitator but a creator.”

Interview http://www.thelantern.com/global_user_elements/printpage.cfm?storyid=63845, The Lantern (5 April 2001)

“I have tried to shed some gleams of light on the shadow of man startled by his anguish.”

As quoted in Wall Street Journal (19 November 1965)
Context: I have designed my style pantomimes as white ink drawings on black backgrounds, so that man’s destiny appears as a thread lost in an endless labyrinth... I have tried to shed some gleams of light on the shadow of man startled by his anguish.

“Silence is like a flame, you see?”

Interview Charlie Rose (27 September 2000)

Marcel Marceau Quotes

“Mime makes the invisible, visible and the visible, invisible.”

As quoted in Core Media Collection for Elementary Schools (1978) by Lucy Gregor Brown; unsourced variant or misquotation: "A magician makes the visible invisible. A mime makes the invisible visible."

“Fathers, I do not practice. I’m not religious in life, but when I perform "The Creation of the World" and when my soul is touched by the confrontation of "Good and Evil", then God enters in me.”

Interview The Lantern (5 April 2001) Replying to two priests who, after a performance of his routines of "The Creation of The World" and "The Hands of Good and Evil", asked if he was religious.

“I have spent more than half a lifetime trying to express the tragic moment.”

The Guardian (London, 11 August 1988)

“To communicate through silence is a link between the thoughts of man.”

US News & World Report (23 February 1987)

“Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?”

As quoted in The Reader’s Digest (June 1958)

“Never get a mime talking. He won’t stop.”

US News & World Report (23 February 1987)

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