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You act with your soul. That's why you all want to be actors, because your souls are not used up by life.

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
Souls
Actors
Used
Soul
Life

More quotes by 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
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The play is not in the words, it’s in you!
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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.
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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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You'll never really be great unless you aim high.
Stella Adler
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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
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Emotions aren't doable. Actions are doable, and if you do them correctly, they prompt the feelings.
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 will only fail to learn if you do not learn from failing.
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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The theatre-acting, creating, interpreting - means total involvement, the totality of heart, mind and spirit.
Stella Adler
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Your talent is in your choice.
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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The imagination is closer to the actor than real life-more agreeable, more comfortable.
Stella Adler
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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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When you most succeed, you do so by seeming not to act at all.
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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It's not enough to have talent. You have to have a talent for your talent.
Stella Adler
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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
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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