Sanford Meisner Quotes

#1. The foundation of acting is the reality of doing.

Sanford Meisner

#2. You know it's all right to be wrong, but it's not all right not to try.

Sanford Meisner

#3. Technique is something that you use if you need it. Otherwise, to hell with it.

Sanford Meisner

#4. That which hinders your task is your task.

Sanford Meisner

#5. Silence has a myriad of meanings. In the theater, silence is an absence of words, but never an absence of meaning.

Sanford Meisner

#6. Acting is the ability to live truthfully under the given imaginary circumstances

Sanford Meisner

#7. Find in yourself those human things which are universal.

Sanford Meisner

#8. Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances.

Sanford Meisner

#9. That's very different, picking up the impulse instead of picking up the cue.

Sanford Meisner

#10. With a developed imagination there's no place you can't go.

Sanford Meisner

#11. 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

#12. You don't pick up cues, you pick up impulses.

Sanford Meisner

#13. The truth of your instincts is the root of your foundation.

Sanford Meisner

#14. Courage means willing to risk everything.

Sanford Meisner

#15. 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

#16. Acting is fun ... don't let that get around!

Sanford Meisner

#17. The American actor is very lucky ... Because so little is asked of him.

Sanford Meisner

#18. Acting in a scene is like paddling a canoe from a pebbly beach on to the river, the writer builds the canoe, and the actor provides the river. The river is the actor's thoughts and emotions.

Sanford Meisner

#19. The text is your greatest enemy.

Sanford Meisner

#20. There's no such thing as nothing.

Sanford Meisner

#21. Act before you think - your instincts are more honest than your thoughts.

Sanford Meisner

#22. 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

#23. 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

#24. Listen with your gut, not your head.

Sanford Meisner

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

Sanford Meisner

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

Sanford Meisner

#27. An ounce of behavior is worth a pound of words.

Sanford Meisner

#28. WHY is the most important word in an actor's vocabulary.

Sanford Meisner

#29. Acting can be fun. Don't let it get around.

Sanford Meisner

#30. Every little moment has a meaning all its own.

Sanford Meisner

#31. If you want to reach every person in the audience, it's not about being bigger, it's about going deeper.

Sanford Meisner

#32. 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

#33. The truth of ourselves is the root of our acting.

Sanford Meisner

#34. To be inventive, to have ideas, is an organic part of being talented.

Sanford Meisner

#35. Acting is not talking, it's living off the other fellow!!!

Sanford Meisner