Sanford Meisner Quotes

Quotes about:

• Act before you think - your instincts are more honest than your thoughts.

  Sanford Meisner

  Thinking, Acting, Honest

  243 Copy quote

• Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances.

  Sanford Meisner

  Acting, Circumstances, Imaginary

  229 Copy quote

• If you want to reach every person in the audience, it's not about being bigger, it's about going deeper.

  Sanford Meisner

  Want, Bigger, Deeper

  224 Copy quote

• Life beats down and crushes our souls and theatre reminds us that we have one. At least the type of theatre that I'm interested in; that is, theatre that moves an audience. You have the opportunity to literally impact the lives of people if they work on material that has integrity. But today, most actors simply want to be famous. Well, being an actor was never supposed to be about fame and money. Being an actor is a religious calling because you've been given the ability, the gift to inspire humanity. Think about that on the way to your soap opera audition.

  Sanford Meisner

  Life, Crush, Religious

  245 Copy quote

• Don't be an actor. Be a human being who works off what exists under imaginary circumstances.

  Sanford Meisner

  Actors, Circumstances, Imaginary

  Sanford Meisner, Dennis Longwell (2012). “Sanford Meisner on Acting”, p.128, Vintage

  189 Copy quote

• Your acting will not be good until it is only yours. That's true of music, acting, anything creative. You work until finally nobody is acting like you.

  Sanford Meisner

  Creative, Acting, Like You

  177 Copy quote

• You don't pick up cues, you pick up impulses.

  Sanford Meisner

  Impulse, Picks

  Sanford Meisner, Dennis Longwell (2012). “Sanford Meisner on Acting”, p.69, Vintage

  80 Copy quote

• The truth of ourselves is the root of our acting.

  Sanford Meisner

  Roots, Theatre, Acting

  Sanford Meisner, Dennis Longwell (2012). “Sanford Meisner on Acting”, p.45, Vintage

  131 Copy quote

• Silence has a myriad of meanings. In the theater, silence is an absence of words, but never an absence of meaning.

  Sanford Meisner

  Silence, Absence, Theater

  Sanford Meisner, Dennis Longwell (2012). “Sanford Meisner on Acting”, p.29, Vintage

  169 Copy quote

• An ounce of behavior is worth a pound of words.

  Sanford Meisner

  Theatre, Acting, Pounds

  Sanford Meisner, Dennis Longwell (2012). “Sanford Meisner on Acting”, p.4, Vintage

  137 Copy quote

• Listen with your gut, not your head.

  Sanford Meisner

  Guts

  78 Copy quote

• The only way to deal with yourself as an actor is to follow the emotional truth of what you have to do under the imaginary circumstances. And as you develop you become confident. You come to believe in what you're doing and trust it because it's out of you.

  Sanford Meisner

  Believe, Emotional, Theatre

  161 Copy quote

• With a developed imagination there's no place you can't go.

  Sanford Meisner

  Imagination

  82 Copy quote

• You can't learn to act unless you're criticized. If you tie that criticism to your childhood insecurities you'll have a terrible time. Instead, you must take criticism objectively, pertaining it only to the work being done.

  Sanford Meisner

  Ties, Childhood, Insecurity

  139 Copy quote

• I'll tell you this: you cannot escape the impact of emotion, whether it's in a big theater or a tiny one. If you have it, it inflates you — correction, 'inflates' is not a good word. If you have it, it infects you and the audience. If you don't have it — don't bother; just say the lines as truthfully as you are capable of doing. You can't fake emotion. It immediately exposes the fact that you ain't got it.

  Sanford Meisner

  Fake, Theatre, Acting

  "Sanford Meisner on Acting".

  150 Copy quote

• That which hinders your task is your task.

  Sanford Meisner

  Work, Tasks, Hinder

  109 Copy quote

• You know it's all right to be wrong, but it's not all right not to try.

  Sanford Meisner

  Trying, Knows

  Sanford Meisner, Dennis Longwell (2012). “Sanford Meisner on Acting”, p.16, Vintage

  32 Copy quote

• Every little moment has a meaning all its own.

  Sanford Meisner

  Acting, Littles, Moments

  Sanford Meisner, Dennis Longwell (2012). “Sanford Meisner on Acting”, p.46, Vintage

  85 Copy quote

• WHY is the most important word in an actor's vocabulary.

  Sanford Meisner

  Vocabulary, Important, Important Words

  77 Copy quote

• Being an actor is a religious calling because you've been given the ability, the gift to inspire humanity. Think about that on the way to your soap opera audition.

  Sanford Meisner

  Religious, Thinking, Inspire

  132 Copy quote

• Courage means willing to risk everything.

  Sanford Meisner

  Mean, Risk, Willing

  99 Copy quote

• The greatest piece of acting or music or sculpture or what-have-you always has its roots in the truth of human emotion.

  Sanford Meisner

  Roots, Acting, Sculpture

  Sanford Meisner, Dennis Longwell (2012). “Sanford Meisner on Acting”, p.42, Vintage

  36 Copy quote

• Acting in a scene is like paddling a canoe from a pebbly beach on to the river, the writer builds the canoe, and the actor provides the river. The river is the actor's thoughts and emotions.

  Sanford Meisner

  Beach, Rivers, Acting

  79 Copy quote

• Transfer the point of concentration to some object outside of yourself - another person, a puzzle, a broken plate that you are gluing.

  Sanford Meisner

  Broken, Acting, Plates

  97 Copy quote

• Acting is the ability to live truthfully under the given imaginary circumstances

  Sanford Meisner

  Acting, Given, Circumstances

  72 Copy quote

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