Sanford Meisner famous quotes

06-08-2025

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

#Work #Tasks #Hinder
Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances.
-- Sanford Meisner

#Acting #Circumstances #Imaginary
Act before you think - your instincts are more honest than your thoughts.
-- Sanford Meisner

#Thinking #Acting #Honest
An ounce of behavior is worth a pound of words.
-- Sanford Meisner

#Acting #Pounds #Behavior
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

#Crush #Religious #Integrity
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

#Creative #Acting #Like You
Every little moment has a meaning all its own.
-- Sanford Meisner

#Acting #Littles #Moments
Find in yourself those human things which are universal.
-- Sanford Meisner

#Acting #Humans
Courage means willing to risk everything.
-- Sanford Meisner

#Mean #Risk #Willing
WHY is the most important word in an actor's vocabulary.
-- Sanford Meisner

#Vocabulary #Important #Actors
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

#Ties #Childhood #Insecurity
The truth of ourselves is the root of our acting.
-- Sanford Meisner

#Roots #Acting
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

#Believe #Emotional #Acting
Silence has a myriad of meanings. In the theater, silence is an absence of words, but never an absence of meaning.
-- Sanford Meisner

#Silence #Absence #Theater
If you want to reach every person in the audience, it's not about being bigger, it's about going deeper.
-- Sanford Meisner

#Want #Bigger #Deeper
Listen with your gut, not your head.
-- Sanford Meisner

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

#Actors #Circumstances #Imaginary
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

#Religious #Thinking #Inspire
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

#Fake #Acting #Lines
The foundation of acting is the reality of doing.
-- Sanford Meisner

#Reality #Acting #Foundation
The text is your greatest enemy.
-- Sanford Meisner

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

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

#Broken #Acting #Plates
There's no such thing as nothing.
-- Sanford Meisner
Acting is not talking, it's living off the other fellow!!!
-- Sanford Meisner

#Talking #Acting
Acting is fun... don't let that get around!
-- Sanford Meisner

#Fun #Acting
The American actor is very lucky... Because so little is asked of him.
-- Sanford Meisner

#Littles #Lucky #Actors
Acting is the ability to live truthfully under the given imaginary circumstances
-- Sanford Meisner

#Acting #Given #Circumstances
You know it's all right to be wrong, but it's not all right not to try.
-- Sanford Meisner

#Trying

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