Piezoelectric actuators is a kind of actuation devices that acts through inverse piezoelectric effect. Due to advantages of high precision, low power consumption, compact size and flexible structure design, they have a wide range of applications in optics, robotics, micro-electromechanical systems, etc. Piezoelectric materials are the core materials for piezoelectric actuators. In this review, recently developments on high-performance piezoelectric materials are introduced, including relaxor ferroelectric crystals, textured ceramics, piezoelectric metamaterials, etc. The advances of piezoelectric actuators are introduced in this review based on the developments of those piezoelectric materials, where the relationship between the figure of merits of materials and the performance of actuators is also discussed. Finally, we present outlooks and challenges for piezoelectric materials and actuators.