If you want to reach every person in the audience, it's not about being bigger, it's about going deeper.
Sanford MeisnerRead
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.
Interpretation
Acting is a profound responsibility that can deeply influence and inspire others.
In this quote, Sanford Meisner emphasizes the sacred duty of being an actor, highlighting that the skill to evoke emotions and inspire audiences is not merely a talent but a calling similar to a religious vocation. He encourages aspiring actors to recognize the profound impact their work can have on humanity, urging them to reflect on this purpose as they pursue their craft.
In practice
During a workshop for aspiring actors, this quote can inspire them to see their craft as a means of impacting lives.
If you want to reach every person in the audience, it's not about being bigger, it's about going deeper.
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.
Acting is the ability to live truthfully under the given imaginary circumstances
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.
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.
She adored all beautiful things in their every curve and fragrance, so that they became part of her. Day by day, she gathered beauty; had she had no heart (she who was the bosom of womanhood) her thoughts would still have been as lilies, because the good is the beautiful.
I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.
The way someone who's being photographed presents himself to the camera, and the effect of the photographer's response on that presence, is what the making of a portrait is all about.
I have always included minority characters in my stories, often as heroes.
A good film demands its own score, and if you are a musician, your conscience will never allow you to do something mediocre for a good film.
I saw the Vietnam Veterans Memorial not as an object placed into the earth but as a cut in the earth that has then been polished, like a geode.
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