Stella Adler famous quotes

The actor has to develop his body. The actor has to work on his voice. But the most important thing the actor has to work on is his mind.
-- Stella Adler

#Voice #Mind #Acting

You have to get beyond your own precious inner experiences.
-- Stella Adler

#Experience

It's not enough to have talent. You have to have a talent for your talent.
-- Stella Adler

#Acting #Talent #Enough

When you stand on the stage you must have a sense that you are addressing the whole world, and that what you say is so important the whole world must listen.
-- Stella Adler

#Important #Acting #World

The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place. It is the place people come to see the truth about life and the social situation.
-- Stella Adler

#Mean #People #Greek

Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.
-- Stella Adler

#Life #Music #Crush

Happy children should not try to be artists. You have to be born with a broken heart and a sense of loneliness inside. I never had a happy moment as a child myself.
-- Stella Adler

#Children #Loneliness #Heart

The ideas of the great playwrights are almost always larger than the experiences of even the best actors.
-- Stella Adler

#Ideas #Actors #Playwright

One way we can enliven the imagination is to push it toward the illogical. We're not scientists. We don't always have to make the logical, reasonable leap.
-- Stella Adler

#Imagination #Acting #Way

Acting can be the healthiest profession in the world, because it allows you to do things you can't do in real life. It allows you to understand more than just what life provides you.
-- Stella Adler

#Real #Acting #World

When you most succeed, you do so by seeming not to act at all.
-- Stella Adler

#Succeed

You will only fail to learn if you do not learn from failing.
-- Stella Adler

#Failing

The imagination is closer to the actor than real life-more agreeable, more comfortable.
-- Stella Adler

#Real #Real Life #Imagination

Don’t use your conscious past. Use your creative imagination to create a past that belongs to your character. I don’t want you to be stuck with your own life. It’s too little.
-- Stella Adler

#Character #Past #Imagination

Your talent is in your choice.
-- Stella Adler

#Choices #Talent

The play is not in the words, it’s in you!
-- Stella Adler

#Play

The theatre is a spiritual and social X-ray of its time.
-- Stella Adler

#Spiritual #Theatre #Rays

Life is boring. The weather is boring. Actors must not be boring.
-- Stella Adler

#Weather #Actors #Life Is

Life in the theatre isn't necessarily when you get money from performing. It isn't when you sign a contract. It isn't even when you are in a play. It's when you understand it. If you understand it, you'll know why you want to act.
-- Stella Adler

#Play #Theatre #Want

Tell yourself that the world is outside, that it's not to be hidden from you, that you are going to thrust yourself forward and be relaxed in the world. You have chosen a field where you're going to be hurt to the blood. But to retreat from the pain is death
-- Stella Adler

#Hurt #Pain #Blood

Actors need a kind of aggression, a kind of inner force. Don't be only one-sided, sweet, nice, good. Get rid of being average. Find the killer in you.
-- Stella Adler

#Sweet #Nice #Average

Your job as actors is to understand the size of what you say, to understand what's beneath the word.
-- Stella Adler

#Jobs #Size #Actors

Emotions aren't doable. Actions are doable, and if you do them correctly, they prompt the feelings.
-- Stella Adler

#Feelings #Action #Emotion

The theatre-acting, creating, interpreting - means total involvement, the totality of heart, mind and spirit.
-- Stella Adler

#Heart #Mean #Creating

You have to do something. If you do something, you become somebody. Even a daffodil does something, has a profession. It gives off scent, professionally.
-- Stella Adler

#Giving #Scent #Doe

You'll begin to act when you can forget your technique - when it is so securely inside you that you need not call upon it consciously.
-- Stella Adler

#Technique #Needs #Forget You

Be innocent, wise and ninety-five.
-- Stella Adler

#Wise #Innocent #Ninety

You have to get beyond your own precious inner experiences. The actor cannot afford to look only to his own life for all his material nor pull strictly from his own experience to find his acting choices and feelings. The ideas of the great playwrights are almost always larger than the experiences of even the best actors.
-- Stella Adler

#Ideas #Choices #Feelings

In life, as on the stage, it's not who I am but what I do that's the measure of my worth and the secret of my success. All the rest is showiness, arrogance and conceit.
-- Stella Adler

#Who I Am #Secret #Arrogance

It's not important to know who you are. It's important to know what you do, and then to do it like hercules!
-- Stella Adler

#Identity #Important #Who You Are

The most important thing you can teach actors is to understand plays.
-- Stella Adler

#Play #Theatre #Important

You act with your soul. That's why you all want to be actors, because your souls are not used up by life.
-- Stella Adler

#Soul #Want #Actors

Today the influences of your society pressure you to be successful before your time. They are pulling you down. They have pulled you down, you big, sweet, magnificent, young, potential artists. They have pulled you down so far that you are on the verge of destruction. Only you don't know it because you want to be a success
-- Stella Adler

#Sweet #Successful #Artist

By taking elements you observe in life, you can develop qualities in your acting life that you don't ordinarily call upon in your personal life.
-- Stella Adler

#Quality #Acting #Elements

An addict is someone who uses their body to tell society that something is wrong.
-- Stella Adler

#Addiction #Use #Body

Acting is in everything but the words.
-- Stella Adler

#Acting

If you can't take both sides, it means you can only play yourself.
-- Stella Adler

#Mean #Play #Sides

No actor is a success unless he feels inside himself, as long as he lives, that he is good.
-- Stella Adler

#Long #Actors #Feels

You cannot afford to confine your studies to the classroom. The universe and all of history is your classroom.
-- Stella Adler

#Study #Classroom #Universe

The only excuse for not coming to a class or a performance is death.
-- Stella Adler

#Class #Excuse #Performances

I would live in a communist country providing I was the Queen.
-- Stella Adler

#Country #Queens #Ego

When an acting teacher tells a student 'that wasn't honest work' or 'that didn't seem real,' what does this mean? In life, we are rarely 'truthful' or 'honest' or 'real'. And characters in plays are almost never 'truthful' or 'honest' or 'real'. What exactly do teachers even mean by these words? A more useful question is: What is the story the actor was telling in their work? An actor is always telling a story. We all are telling stories, all the time. Story: that is what it is all about.
-- Stella Adler

#Teacher #Real #Character

The best author is a dead author, because he's out of your way and you own the play. Take what he has given you and use it for what you need.
-- Stella Adler

#Play #Use #Way

To grow: that is your deepest and truest need when you say, 'I want to be an actor.'
-- Stella Adler

#Want #Needs #Actors

The actor must be full of passion. If he's too cool he's better off as the manager of a company, not someone who appears on the stage.
-- Stella Adler

#Passion #Actors #Stage

Growth as an actor and as a human being are synonymous.
-- Stella Adler

#Growth #Actors #Humans

The ultimate aim of the training is to create an actor who can be responsible for his artistic development and achievement.
-- Stella Adler

#Achievement #Training #Actors