Quote

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

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
Given
Best
Play
Need
Take
Copying
Needs
Author
Way
Dead
Use

More quotes by Stella Adler

Image
It's not important to know who you are. It's important to know what you do, and then to do it like hercules!
Stella Adler
Image
It's not enough to have talent. You have to have a talent for your talent.
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
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
Image
You have to do something. If you do something, you become somebody. Even a daffodil does something, has a profession. It gives off scent, professionally.
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
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
Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.
Stella Adler
Image
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
Image
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
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
Image
Your job as actors is to understand the size of what you say, to understand what's beneath the word.
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
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
Your talent is in your choice.
Stella Adler
Image
The theatre-acting, creating, interpreting - means total involvement, the totality of heart, mind and spirit.
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
The play is not in the words, it’s in you!
Stella Adler
Image
The imagination is closer to the actor than real life-more agreeable, more comfortable.
Stella Adler