Stella Adler Quotes

The most important thing you can teach actors is to understand plays.

I would live in a communist country providing I was the Queen.

If you can't take both sides, it means you can only play yourself.

The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place.

The ideas of the great playwrights are almost always larger than the experiences of even the best actors.

The ultimate aim of the training is to create an actor who can be responsible for his artistic development and achievement.

No actor is a success unless he feels inside himself, as long as he lives, that he is good.

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.

By taking elements you observe in life, you can develop qualities in your acting life that you don't ordinarily call upon in your personal life.

An addict is someone who uses their body to tell society that something is wrong.

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.

Be innocent, wise and ninety-five.

The theatre is a spiritual and social X-ray of its time.

The theatre-acting, creating, interpreting - means total involvement, the totality of heart, mind and spirit.

It's not important to know who you are. It's important to know what you do, and then to do it like hercules!

You cannot afford to confine your studies to the classroom. The universe and all of history is your classroom.

When you most succeed, you do so by seeming not to act at all.

To grow: that is your deepest and truest need when you say, 'I want to be an actor.'

You'll never really be great unless you aim high.

The play is not in the words, it’s in you!

One way we can enliven the imagination is to push it toward the illogical. We're not scientists. We don't always have to make the logical, reasonable leap.

Life is boring. The weather is boring. Actors must not be boring.

Your talent is in your choice.

It's not enough to have talent. You have to have a talent for your talent.

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

You have to get beyond your own precious inner experiences.

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

Emotions aren't doable. Actions are doable, and if you do them correctly, they prompt the feelings.

The only excuse for not coming to a class or a performance is death.

You will only fail to learn if you do not learn from failing.

Growth as an actor and as a human being are synonymous.

Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.