Explore Quotes by Sanford Meisner

Courage means willing to risk everything.

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

Acting is fun. Don't let that get around.

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

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

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

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.

The foundation of acting is the reality of doing.

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

The text is your greatest enemy.

There's no such thing as nothing.

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

The American actor is very lucky. Why? Because so little is asked of him.

That which hinders your task is your task.

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.

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

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.

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.

Acting is not talking, it's living off the other fellow!!!

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

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.