Quote

Don’t use your conscious past. Use your creative imagination to create a past that belongs to your character. I don’t want you to be stuck with your own life. It’s too little.

Stella Adler

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Stella Adler
Age: 91 †
Born: 1901
Born: February 10
Died: 1992
Died: December 21
Actress
Drama Teacher
Film Actor
Stage Actor
Manhattan borough
New York City
Life
Create
Imagination
Creative
Use
Past
Belongs
Character
Theatre
Littles
Stuck
Little
Conscious

More quotes by Stella Adler

Image
Today the influences of your society pressure you to be successful before your time. They are pulling you down. They have pulled you down, you big, sweet, magnificent, young, potential artists. They have pulled you down so far that you are on the verge of destruction. Only you don't know it because you want to be a success
Stella Adler
Image
Your talent is in your choice.
Stella Adler
Image
Tell yourself that the world is outside, that it's not to be hidden from you, that you are going to thrust yourself forward and be relaxed in the world. You have chosen a field where you're going to be hurt to the blood. But to retreat from the pain is death
Stella Adler
Image
Our heritage as actors goes back thousands of years, and we have to feel as comfortable in the clothes, and the language of Sophocles as we do in our sneakers.
Stella Adler
Image
The actor has to develop his body. The actor has to work on his voice. But the most important thing the actor has to work on is his mind.
Stella Adler
Image
It's not enough to have talent. You have to have a talent for your talent.
Stella Adler
Image
Happy children should not try to be artists. You have to be born with a broken heart and a sense of loneliness inside. I never had a happy moment as a child myself.
Stella Adler
Image
To grow: that is your deepest and truest need when you say, 'I want to be an actor.'
Stella Adler
Image
You will only fail to learn if you do not learn from failing.
Stella Adler
Image
You have to get beyond your own precious inner experiences.
Stella Adler
Image
Your job as actors is to understand the size of what you say, to understand what's beneath the word.
Stella Adler
Image
In life, as on the stage, it's not who I am but what I do that's the measure of my worth and the secret of my success. All the rest is showiness, arrogance and conceit.
Stella Adler
Image
Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.
Stella Adler
Image
Be innocent, wise and ninety-five.
Stella Adler
Image
When you stand on the stage you must have a sense that you are addressing the whole world, and that what you say is so important the whole world must listen.
Stella Adler
Image
The actor must be full of passion. If he's too cool he's better off as the manager of a company, not someone who appears on the stage.
Stella Adler
Image
The best author is a dead author, because he's out of your way and you own the play. Take what he has given you and use it for what you need.
Stella Adler
Image
I would live in a communist country providing I was the Queen.
Stella Adler
Image
When you most succeed, you do so by seeming not to act at all.
Stella Adler
Image
Your curse is that you have chosen a form that requires endless study .... It means you have to read, you have to observe, you have to think, so that when you turn your imagination on, it has the fuel to do its job.
Stella Adler