Sanford Meisner Quotes & Sayings

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

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

An ounce of behavior is worth a pound of words. — Sanford Meisner

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

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

Acting is the ability to live truthfully under the given imaginary circumstances — Sanford Meisner

You don't pick up cues, you pick up impulses. — Sanford Meisner

Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances. — Sanford Meisner

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

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

One can use standard principles and textbooks in educating people for law, medicine, architecture, chemistry or almost any other profession - but not for the theater. For, in most professions, every practitioner uses the same tools and techniques, while the actor's chief instrument is himself. And since no two persons are alike, no universal rule is applicable to any two actors in exactly the same way. — Sanford Meisner

The truth of your instincts is the root of your foundation. — Sanford Meisner

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

Courage means willing to risk everything. — Sanford Meisner

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

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

You know it's all right to be wrong, but it's not all right not to try. — Sanford Meisner

The text is your greatest enemy. — Sanford Meisner

Listen with your gut, not your head. — Sanford Meisner

There's no such thing as nothing. — Sanford Meisner

Every little moment has a meaning all its own. — Sanford Meisner

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

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

Acting is fun ... don't let that get around! — Sanford Meisner

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

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

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

The truth of ourselves is the root of our acting. — Sanford Meisner

That which hinders your task is your task. — Sanford Meisner

... 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. — Sanford Meisner

Find in yourself those human things which are universal. — Sanford Meisner

If you have the emotion, it infects you and the audience. If you don't have it don't bother; just say your lines as truthfully as you are capable of doing. You can't fake emotion. — Sanford Meisner

To be inventive, to have ideas, is an organic part of being talented. — Sanford Meisner

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

The foundation of acting is the reality of doing. — Sanford Meisner

Technique is something that you use if you need it. Otherwise, to hell with it. — Sanford Meisner

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

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