When you’re playing a character who’s cruel, look for the places where he’s kind. When you’re playing a character who is unhappy, look for the places where he has a glint of merriment.
Our demands are simple, normal, and therefore they are difficult to satisfy. All we ask is that an actor on the stage live in accordance with natural laws.
The greatest wisdom is to realize one’s lack of it.
Talent is nothing but a prolonged period of attention and a shortened period of mental assimilation.
Young actors, fear your admirers! Learn in time, from your first steps, to hear, understand and love the cruel truth about yourselves. Find out who can tell you that truth and talk of your art only with those who can tell you the truth.
When an actor is completely absorbed by some profoundly moving objective so that he throws his whole being passionately into its execution, he reaches a state we call inspiration.
Success is transient, evanescent. The real passion lies in the poignant acquisition of knowledge about all the shading and subtleties of the creative secrets.
The character has to have some kind of arch. The character has to go through an event, and be changed by the human event.
The main factor in any form of creativeness is the life of a human spirit, that of the actor and his part, their joint feelings and subconscious creation.
At times of great stress it is especially necessary to achieve a complete freeing of the muscles.
In talking about a genius, you would not say that he lies; he sees realities with different eyes from ours.
We have as many planes of speech as does a painting planes of perspective which create perspective in a phrase. The most important word stands out most vividly defined in the very foreground of the sound plane. Less important words create a series of deeper planes.
Doubt is the enemy of creativeness.
The direct effect on our mind is achieved by the words, the text, the thought, which arouse consideration. Our will is directly affected by the super-objective, by other objectives, by a through line of action. Our feelings are directly worked upon by tempo-rhythm.
In life we listen to other people. Listen with varying degrees of concentration and attention, right? Actors must learn to listen in a different way.
You must be so thoroughly immersed in the given circumstances of the play, then you decide what it is that the actor wants at any given moment.
Don’t go so deep in yourself that you no longer exist for your partner and for the character and for the play.
All art is autobiographical – if it’s not, it’s not going to quicken on-stage, and it’s not going to come alive.
I was born an ordinary actor. I will die an ordinary actor. But I’ve persisted.
Gratuitous cruelty borders on the pathological, psychotic and that becomes uninteresting because there is no choice.