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Your job as actors is to understand the size of what you say, to understand what's beneath the word.

Stella Adler

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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
Beneath
Size
Word
Actors
Understand
Jobs

More quotes by Stella Adler

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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
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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
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Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.
Stella Adler
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Life in the theatre isn't necessarily when you get money from performing. It isn't when you sign a contract. It isn't even when you are in a play. It's when you understand it. If you understand it, you'll know why you want to act.
Stella Adler
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The play is not in the words, it’s in you!
Stella Adler
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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
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I would live in a communist country providing I was the Queen.
Stella Adler
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You'll never really be great unless you aim high.
Stella Adler
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The theatre-acting, creating, interpreting - means total involvement, the totality of heart, mind and spirit.
Stella Adler
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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
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To grow: that is your deepest and truest need when you say, 'I want to be an actor.'
Stella Adler
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You will only fail to learn if you do not learn from failing.
Stella Adler
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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
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The imagination is closer to the actor than real life-more agreeable, more comfortable.
Stella Adler
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An addict is someone who uses their body to tell society that something is wrong.
Stella Adler
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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
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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
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Acting can be the healthiest profession in the world, because it allows you to do things you can't do in real life. It allows you to understand more than just what life provides you.
Stella Adler
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Your talent is in your choice.
Stella Adler
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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