34 Quotes by Sanford Meisner

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.

That’s very different, picking up the impulse instead of picking up the cue.

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.

With a developed imagination there’s no place you can’t go.

The greatest piece of acting or music or sculpture or what-have-you always has its roots in the truth of human emotion.

One can use standard principles and textbooks in educating people for law, medicine, architecture, chemistry or almost any other profession – but not for the theater. For, in most professions, every practitioner uses the same tools and techniques, while the actor’s chief instrument is himself. And since no two persons are alike, no universal rule is applicable to any two actors in exactly the same way.

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