Best 27 quotes of Sanford Meisner on MyQuotes

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

Acting can be fun. Don't let it get around.

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.

Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances.

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

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

An ounce of behavior is worth a pound of words.

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.

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

Every little moment has a meaning all its own.

Find in yourself those human things which are universal.

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.

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.

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

That's very different, picking up the impulse instead of picking up the cue.

That which hinders your task is your task.

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

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

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.

The truth of ourselves is the root of our acting.

The truth of your instincts is the root of your foundation.

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

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

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.

... as a convention, you get up and walk to the window to make the audience believe that you're looking out. It's for the audience, not for you! And what it means to you is something emotional [...] If you went to the Actors Studio you'd spend six months seeing the snow before you could say, 'Look at the snow.' This takes a terrible burden away from the actor, who thinks he's got to see the woods and the snow. 'Give me my gun! I see a rabbit! Give me my gun!' " Meisner sounds thrilled at the possibility of a hunt. "That happens when you're still sitting there reading. Then when they put in the scenery you move to the window. Isn't that simple? How simple it is to solve the problem of seeing things when you know that it's all in you emotionally, and that walking to the window is only a convention.

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

The text is your greatest enemy.