Quote Help Needed!

“Acting!”

“Brilliant!”

“Thank you!”

I just heard it on television in an SNL sketch with Jon Lovitz and John Lithgow about Shakesperian acting. And while that may have been the first place it existed, I know I’ve heard it somewhere before.

Help me, please, lest I go absolutely insane!

(And now we begin the countdown for this thread to leave the front page unanswered…)

It wasn’t just “a” sketch. “ACTING!” was a running sketch that went on for some time. The one you mentioned was only one of several and there were several before it. You may be conflating the earlier instance you remember with one of those earlier shows.

http://today.uci.edu/Features/profile_detail.asp?key=35

And the closest I can get from Shakespeare on acting:

I can picture Master Thespian saying that!

Cannot find a quote with just “ACTING!” shortest and closest famous quotes:

I love acting. It is so much more real than life. - Oscar Wilde

I have to act to live. -Sir Lawrence Olivier