More Quotes on Acting

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“Learning has to cost you something.  If you fail but learn something from your failure, you will grow. You don’t achieve stature unless you fail. You will only fail to learn if you do not learn from failing. Falling flat on your face will uplift you. “

Stella Adler
The Art of Acting


“Presenting scenes in class and receiving criticism without the pressures imposed by the final communication of a finished performance before a paying audience should help to exercise the actor’s craft through the glorious freedom to fail, the daring to try and to risk. Having to play safe stunts the growth of any artist.”

Uta Hagen
Respect for Acting


“It doesn’t matter whether an individual piece of work in a studio is a failure or a success, because it is good or bad only in terms of your own needs, of your own development.”

Lee Strasberg
Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio


“Among ourselves we sometimes say that this is a place where you can fall flat on your face.”

Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio

“Every time an actor changes from something he is used to to something he is not used to is fraught with danger. Even if the new thing is not well done, it may lead to a much more successful doing than anything done before.”

Lee Strasberg

“The wrong kind of concentration is a stumbling block, and once you have removed it, you are better. If you can concentrate your genuine human powers of attention on fulfilling a concrete task in performance, you will be really good.”

Constantin Stanislavski
Stanislavski in Rehearsal (Toporkov)


“There is no basis for a true characterization unless the character’s prime motivation or spine is found. [a.k.a. superobjective/ overall objective/ unfulfilled need] The character’s spines had best be stated as active verbs. The spine is an active response to a wish: the characters want something and do something to satisfy that wish.”

Harold Clurman
On Directing


“As long as you’re acting with the thought that you must be deemed good or great or brilliant, you will never reach your potential. You must do it for the right reason.”

Sandra Seacat 1986


“It is for people who work step by step. While there is no recipe for acting, but it does follow a sequence of principles.”

Stella Adler

“The skepticism of everyday life and the loss of artistic ideals creates an environment of irreverence. Actors frequently come smashed physically and emotionally…But there is a basic need in humans that makes them want to expand their personalities, there is a spark that wants to grow. That spark has to be kept alive. With much effort the actor can grow.”

Stella Adler

“Your character’s overall objective [need] must be worded in a way that establishes a change in their life that is necessary for physical and/ or emotional survival.”

Ivana Chubbuck


“Acting requires faith. You just have to believe that you are the person you’re playing and that what is happening is happening to you.”

Humphrey Bogart


“Once that belief becomes conviction, things begin to happen.”

Muhammad Ali


“Asking ‘what if’ is the simplest way to access imagination. Asking ‘what if,’ Stella Adler says ‘will turn on your ignition.’”

Susan Batson


“Express what words can’t.”

(I didn’t write down who said this one.)

“What motor can I set off in me that will get me cooking?”

(I didn’t write down who said this. Could be any great teacher.)

Finally:

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”


Eleanor Roosevelt

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