Strasberg's Quotes

#1. 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

#2. 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

#3. Good health is the most important thing. More than success. More than money. More than power.

Lee Strasberg

#4. Seventy-five percent of great art is hard work only about twenty-five percent is great talent.

Lee Strasberg

#5. My dad treated Marilyn Monroe more like his daughter than me.

Susan Strasberg

#6. The human being who acts is the human being who lives.

Lee Strasberg

#7. I joined the Actors Studio and began to work with Lee Strasberg, and that changed my work.

Sally Field

#8. A great performance like Lady Macbeth may be forgotten. Writing endures.

Susan Strasberg

#9. An actors' tribute to me is in his work.

Lee Strasberg

#10. 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

#11. 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

#12. Work for the actor lies essentially in two areas: the ability to consistently create reality and the ability to express that reality.

Lee Strasberg

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

Susan Strasberg

#14. You can't push a wave onto the shore any faster than the ocean brings it in.

Susan Strasberg

#15. As I got older, I would study privately with some coaches. Then I found Lee Strasberg, which I loved.

Daniella Alonso

#16. As far as I can see, about the only thing I've missed is a college education.

Susan Strasberg

#17. Art is longer than life.

Lee Strasberg

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

Susan Strasberg

#19. Professionally I felt like a horse running in the wrong race.

Susan Strasberg

#20. 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

#21. 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

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

Paul Henreid

#23. 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

#24. For the actor, The Lee Strasberg Notes are an indispensable companion.

Johnny Depp

#25. 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

#26. January 21: Marilyn returns to New York and visits Lee Strasberg.

Carl Rollyson

#27. Like the Bible, Stanislavsky's basic texts on acting can be quoted to any purpose.

Lee Strasberg

#28. 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

#29. 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

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

Lee Strasberg

#31. 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

#32. If we cannot see the possibility of greatness, how can we dream it?

Lee Strasberg

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

Susan Strasberg

#34. 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

#35. I always think upon Lee Strasberg with warmth, and reviewing his wisdom is a pleasure.

Francis Ford Coppola

#36. 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