Acting Teachers Quotes

• The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place. It is the place people come to see the truth about life and the social situation.

  Stella Adler

  Mean, People, Greek

  70 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

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• Study, find all the good teachers and study with them, get involved in acting to act, not to be famous or for the money. Do plays. It's not worth it if you are just in it for the money. You have to love it.

  Philip Seymour Hoffman

  Teacher, Play, Acting

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place.

  Stella Adler

  Mean, Greek, Theatre

  Howard Kissel, Stella Adler (2000). “Stella Adler - The Art of Acting: preface by Marlon Brando compiled & edited by Howard Kissel”, p.29, Hal Leonard Corporation

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• An acting teacher once told me, 'Greet everything with yes... Even if you abandon one idea for another one, saying yes allows you to move forward.'

  Tina Fey

  Teacher, Motivation, Moving

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• I never studied. I was too afraid. I thought that if an acting teacher had said to me, "You know what, you're not good," I would not have gone any further. It was easier for me to justify going to an audition and getting rejected, maybe because they wanted somebody blonde, maybe because I wasn't experienced enough. I could live with that more easily.

  Demi Moore

  Teacher, Acting, Auditions

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• The theatre is a spiritual and social X-ray of its time.

  Stella Adler

  Spiritual, Theatre, Rays

  Howard Kissel, Stella Adler (2000). “Stella Adler - The Art of Acting: preface by Marlon Brando compiled & edited by Howard Kissel”, p.30, Hal Leonard Corporation

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• Part of an actor's job is to actually adopt the world-view of the character she is playing and to tell the story from that vantage point. If an actor represses large aspects of their personality, they will have a severely limited range and castability. Great actors cultivate effortless access to their subpersonalities. Many acting teachers call this 'freeing your instrument.'

  Jack Lemmon

  Teacher, Jobs, Character

  20 Copy quote

• I've always remembered something Sanford Meisner, my acting teacher, told us. When you create a character, it's like making a chair, except instead of making someting out of wood, you make it out of yourself. That's the actor's craft - using yourself to create a character.

  Robert Duvall

  Teacher, Character, Acting

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• When an acting teacher tells a student 'that wasn't honest work' or 'that didn't seem real,' what does this mean? In life, we are rarely 'truthful' or 'honest' or 'real'. And characters in plays are almost never 'truthful' or 'honest' or 'real'. What exactly do teachers even mean by these words? A more useful question is: What is the story the actor was telling in their work? An actor is always telling a story. We all are telling stories, all the time. Story: that is what it is all about.

  Stella Adler

  Teacher, Real, Character

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• I know what it's like to have a dream. I know what it's like to roll the dice and say, 'I'm going to go after this thing,' and nothing turns my stomach quicker than acting teachers or acting schools that look at a bunch of dreamers and say, 'We can help,' when they know full well that they can't.

  Jim Parrack

  Dream, Teacher, School

  4 Copy quote

• I learned never to listen to acting teachers because they don't know what the hell they're talking about.

  Tim Robbins

  Teacher, Talking, Acting

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• You have to come in and be that character when you walk into the room. That's what one of my first acting teachers taught me. You know, don't go in there being Jennifer and then expect to flip and change, because they're not going to have that imagination.

  Jennifer Lopez

  Teacher, Character, Imagination

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• I had acting teachers, and one of the things that was encouraged was to keep it fresh, to be spontaneous. That's the magic of film often.

  Matt Dillon

  Teacher, Magic, Acting

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• My acting teacher used to say that people reveal themselves in their opposites.

  Kristin Bauer van Straten

  Teacher, Opposites, People

  "Kristin Bauer van Straten Exclusive Interview TRUE BLOOD". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. August 21, 2011.

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• I was trained by Method acting teachers and we were taught that aside from whatever gift you may or may not have or the level of that gift, that you were obliged to know how to build a table. It's a craft. It's like being a ballerina or a violinist.

  Ellen Barkin

  Teacher, Acting, Levels

  "Actress-producer Ellen Barkin". "The Tavis Smiley Show" with Tavis Smiley, www.pbs.org. November 14, 2011.

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• You reminded me of a quote that my acting teacher Stella Adler wrote in her book ['The Art of Acting'], which I asked her to sign: "The young actor feels some greatness inside themselves that they want to give back to the world." That resonated with me, but I didn't really understand what she was talking about until much later, in the way you surmised that my struggle to become an actor was from being this kind of introverted young boy.

  Mark Ruffalo

  Teacher, Art, Struggle

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• At Cornell, my acting teacher said you cannot be religious and be an artist. I sort of got it, because faith is a comfort and art comes from a lot of places, in a lot of people, from the dark chasm.

  Catherine Hicks

  Teacher, Religious, Art

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• I'll never forget my high school acting teacher, Anthony Abeson, who said, "It starts with the shoes." When I think about a character, it does start with the shoes: What kind would she wear? How would she walk in them? If I'm going to put on a dress for a role - I don't care if it's the hardest dress to put on - I have to put the shoes on first. The physicality leads me to the character.

  Jennifer Aniston

  Teacher, School, Character

  Interview with Kristin Hahn, www.elle.com. August 4, 2009.

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• I had an acting teacher tell me once that if you're playing a car salesman, you don't want to be an OK car salesman, you want to play the best car salesman.

  Aaron Tveit

  Teacher, Play, Car

  "SXSW: Aaron Tveit on Going From Stage to Screen, 'Les Mis' Groupies and New Gig 'Graceland'". Interview with Shirley Halperin, www.hollywoodreporter.com. March 12, 2013.

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• I think you're an acting teacher in disguise You're so incredibly intuitive and always passionate and always driven to go further. I never had to worry. All I had to do was look at you, babe.

  Chad Coleman

  Teacher, Thinking, Worry

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• Yes, I was actually an acting teacher for a while.

  Alanna Ubach

  Teacher, Acting

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• I was raised in New York City and raised in the New York City theater world. My father was a theater director and an acting teacher, and it was not uncommon for me to have long discussions about the method and what the various different processes were to finding a character and exploring character and realizing that character.

  Vin Diesel

  Teacher, New York, Father

  "Vin Diesel Says ‘Fast Five’ is Part of a New ‘Furious’ Trilogy". Interview with Mike Eisenberg, screenrant.com. January 25, 2011.

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• There is a group of us that met through Howard Klein's class in Los Angeles. Howard Klein is a prominent acting teacher. We got together and did this short Night Music that was such an amazing experience, Guy and I were thinking, 'Okay, what do we do next?' So he wrote this next movie of his, Loulou.

  Boti Bliss

  Teacher, Night, Thinking

  Source: actionflickchick.com

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• I grew up the son of an acting teacher but I've never been really good at articulating what that process is. It was always a bit more internal.

  Vin Diesel

  Teacher, Son, Acting

  "Vin Diesel on Vin and Babylon A.D". Interview with Cole Smithey, www.colesmithey.com. August 28, 2008.

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