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Acting is the ability to live truthfully under the given imaginary circumstances

Sanford Meisner

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Sanford Meisner
Age: 91 †
Born: 1905
Born: August 31
Died: 1997
Died: February 1
Actor
Drama Teacher
Brooklyn
New York
Truthfully
Imaginary
Circumstances
Acting
Ability
Given
Live

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Acting is fun. Don't let that get around.
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With a developed imagination there's no place you can't go.
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If you want to reach every person in the audience, it's not about being bigger, it's about going deeper.
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You know it's all right to be wrong, but it's not all right not to try.
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Transfer the point of concentration to some object outside of yourself - another person, a puzzle, a broken plate that you are gluing.
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Act before you think - your instincts are more honest than your thoughts.
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The truth of ourselves is the root of our acting.
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Being an actor is a religious calling because you've been given the ability, the gift to inspire humanity. Think about that on the way to your soap opera audition.
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Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances.
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Find in yourself those human things which are universal.
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Don't be an actor. Be a human being who works off what exists under imaginary circumstances.
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The truth of your instincts is the root of your foundation.
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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.
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The greatest piece of acting or music or sculpture or what-have-you always has its roots in the truth of human emotion.
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Acting can be fun. Don't let it get around.
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WHY is the most important word in an actor's vocabulary.
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You don't pick up cues, you pick up impulses.
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Silence has a myriad of meanings. In the theater, silence is an absence of words, but never an absence of meaning.
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The American actor is very lucky. Why? Because so little is asked of him.
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Acting is not talking, it's living off the other fellow!!!
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