Best 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

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

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

Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances. — Sanford Meisner

Take it from a director: if you get an actor that Sandy Meisner has trained, you've been blessed. — Elia Kazan

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

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

Courage means willing to risk everything. — Sanford Meisner

As she reached back for the buckle, her fingers met Mr. Meisner's. She jumped. "I can do this ... Sir."
"Ah." He brushed aside her fingers. "I see you've at least remembered the sir."
"One always calls gentlemen that, just as you
"
With only a rustle of cloth to warn her, his teeth met in the lobe of her ear, sending a spark into her middle. Like the melt of winter snow, she felt heat pool in her lower body. Her fingers curled against her collarbone where her hands still rested either side of her neck.
"I'm not a gentleman, Faith. — Cari Silverwood

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

Every time I am reading actors I can pretty well tell which ones have studied with Meisner. It is because they are honest and simple and don't lay on complications that aren't necessary. — Arthur Miller

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

I don't really have a method or a technical process. I studied [Sanford] Meisner, and that's the thing that really works for me. That sort of instinctual, in the moment, what the other actors do, working off them and letting the story unfold, as opposed to having an idea of what the story should be. — Maria Bello

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

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

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

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

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

For the thousandth time, Faith wondered why this appealed to her. She detested letting men walk all over her, letting them think they were supreme beings. But when Mr. Meisner did all these diabolical things to her, her body fired up and wanted more. — Cari Silverwood

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

I went to theater school, and if I spent time with one school of thought in this whole acting game, it's the Meisner approach of improvise-based acting. This does not mean that you improvise your acting, but that you focus on the other person. — Mackenzie Davis

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

I've trained primarily in Meisner Technique, and I've done a little bit of Groundlings and Upright Citizens Brigade just to get my feet wet in the improv world because I think that's really important. But most of the teachers I've worked with, I've gotten, like, references through agents or managers, and they're sort of independent. — Scottie Thompson

At the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre, Sanford Meisner said, 'When you go into the professional world, at a stock theatre somewhere, backstage, you will meet an older actor, someone who has been around awhile. He will tell you tales and anecdotes, about life in the theatre. He will speak to you about your performance and the performances of others, and he will generalize to you, based on his experience and his intuitions, about the laws of the stage. Ignore this man!' — David Mamet

I studied technique for ten years, from age 7 to 17. I guess you could say I went more on the Stanislavski side than the Meisner side - there's always that wide divide among actors when it comes to technique. — Thomas Ian Nicholas

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