Strasberg Quotes & Sayings

I was willing to pay any price including subservience to secure this love, hoping that with each piece of myself I gave up he would be so pleased that he, too, would be transformed. — Susan Strasberg

Art is longer than life. — Lee Strasberg

Lee Strasberg told me I had talent. Real talent. It was the first time that anyone, except my father
who had to say so
told me I was good. At anything. It was a turning point in my life. I went to bed thinking about acting. I woke up thinking about acting. It was like the roof had come off my life! — Jane Fonda

Work for the actor lies essentially in two areas: the ability to consistently create reality and the ability to express that reality. — Lee Strasberg

January 21: Marilyn returns to New York and visits Lee Strasberg. — Carl Rollyson

Professionally I felt like a horse running in the wrong race. — Susan Strasberg

I meditate, I do yoga and I have a lot of friends who are healers ... And if none of that works, I go by a chocolate bar and a bottle of cognac. — Susan Strasberg

Seventy-five percent of great art is hard work only about twenty-five percent is great talent. — Lee Strasberg

As I got older, I would study privately with some coaches. Then I found Lee Strasberg, which I loved. — Daniella Alonso

I trained at the Lee Strasberg Institute at Tisch, which is a huge foundation for young actors. They teach you their methods and give you the sense that acting is much more tangible than most people think. I think there's a mysticism of what acting is, in the fact that it's this ungraspable, spur-of-the-moment thing that nobody can understand. — Roberto Aguire

There's no such thing as The Method. The term 'method-acting' is so much nonsense. There are many methods, many techniques. — Susan Strasberg

I'd rather not marry an actor because there isn't room in the house for two egos. — Susan Strasberg

It took me forever, learning improvisation, because I had studied with Lee Strasberg - I dropped out of Chicago and went to his classes in New York for a couple of years, once or twice a week. What I didn't realize was I was learning directing because he wasn't all that good about acting, not for me. — Mike Nichols

My acting career wasn't going where I wanted it to. I wasn't getting good parts. I got so bored with myself that I started writing. — Susan Strasberg

Acting isn't something you do. Instead of doing it, it occurs. If you're going to start with logic, you might as well give up. You can have conscious preparation, but you have unconscious results. — Lee Strasberg

For the actor, The Lee Strasberg Notes are an indispensable companion. — Johnny Depp

As far as I can see, about the only thing I've missed is a college education. — Susan Strasberg

I never felt Lee Strasberg could act, and I fail to see how someone who can't act can teach acting. — Paul Henreid

I studied acting for 10 years before I went for an audition. I studied with Lee Strasberg and Actors Studio teachers, and went to the High School of Performing Arts. — Ellen Barkin

I was so lucky. I was very broke and I was taking classes at Lee Strasberg's Institute and I saw a 3 X 5 index card on the bulletin board advertising for college-aged girls for a film. That was Animal House. — Karen Allen

A great performance like Lady Macbeth may be forgotten. Writing endures. — Susan Strasberg

I don't know what's wrong with me. When I was a girl they had this aviary in one of my foster homes and I'd go in when no one was looking and put out watermelon rinds to feed the flies. There were all these flies that would have starved if I hadn't, and I'm not even wild about flies. They say it makes you a gentler person if you don't eat meat. But wasn't Hitler a vegetarian? — Susan Strasberg

I was a student of Stella Adler and then later Lee Strasberg, and they were into sensory work. At its best, acting is not about words - even when the words are important. — Mark Margolis

There are people whose sense of reality is very strong, who have a sense of honesty. Lee Strasberg is like that, my grandfather was like that. These are the kinds of men I've had close relationships with. — Al Pacino

I was always drawn toward the Actor's Studio. I studied at the Lee Strasberg Institute when I first came to New York. One of my favorite teachers was one of Al [Pachino]'s teachers, a guy named Charlie Laughton, who was just a wonderful, wonderful man. — Karen Allen

An actors' tribute to me is in his work. — Lee Strasberg

Th e basic principle of Method acting is that you should draw on your own personal experience - "You know how you felt when you were seven, and your dog died? Well, think about that when you're playing Hamlet." It sounds simple enough, but it involves learning lots of techniques to heighten your capacity for emotional recall. Those techniques were westernized from the original Russian templates by people like Lee Strasberg, who taught James Dean and Al Pacino, and Stella Adler - another teacher in New York at the time - who taught Brando. — Anonymous

You can't push a wave onto the shore any faster than the ocean brings it in. — Susan Strasberg

I loved their home. Everything smelled older, worn but safe; the food aroma had baked itself into the furniture. — Susan Strasberg

I always think upon Lee Strasberg with warmth, and reviewing his wisdom is a pleasure. — Francis Ford Coppola

I joined the Actors Studio and began to work with Lee Strasberg, and that changed my work. — Sally Field

A great actor is independent of the poet, because the supreme essence of feeling does not reside in prose or in verse, but in the accent with which it is delivered. — Lee Strasberg

The actor creates with his own flesh and blood all those things which all the arts try in some way to describe. — Lee Strasberg

If we cannot see the possibility of greatness, how can we dream it? — Lee Strasberg

There are still actors who use emotional memory, affective memory, which was Lee Strasberg's emphasis, not his total emphasis. She taught everything at the Actor's Studio. But nevertheless, she felt that it impeded her. — James Lipton

Like the Bible, Stanislavsky's basic texts on acting can be quoted to any purpose. — Lee Strasberg

Good health is the most important thing. More than success. More than money. More than power. — Lee Strasberg

Acting is the most personal of our crafts. The make-up of a human being - his physical, mental and emotional habits - influence his acting to a much greater extent than commonly recognized. — Lee Strasberg

My dad treated Marilyn Monroe more like his daughter than me. — Susan Strasberg

It become totally untenable to me that after acting for 25 years - I've played Juliet, Cleopatra and Anne Frank - there I was, sitting in Hollywood, just waiting for somebody to want me. — Susan Strasberg

The human being who acts is the human being who lives. — Lee Strasberg

Out of perverseness, I jumped on the subway and went down to a sound stage on Fourth Street to watch the shooting of Kay Doubleday's big strip scene in Mad Dog Coll, a gangster film that can still, to my embarrassment, be seen occasionally on late-night TV... Kay Doubleday was in my class at Lee Strasberg's; it was in the interest of art, I told myself, to watch her prance down a ramp, singing and stripping her heart out. — Brooke Hayward

Marilyn always dreamt of being an actress. She didn't, by the way, dream of being just a star. She dreamt of being an actress. And she had always lived somehow with that dream. And that is why, despite the fact that she became one of the most unusual and outstanding stars of all time, she herself was never satisfied. When she came to New York, she began to perceive the possibilities of really accomplishing her dream, of being an actress. — Lee Strasberg