Constantin Stanislavski Quotes

When you're playing a character who's cruel, look for the places where he's kind. When you're playing a character who is unhappy, look for the places where he has a glint of merriment.

Create your own method. Don't depend slavishly on mine. Make up something that will work for you! But keep breaking traditions, I beg you.

Who am I? What will I be? Why am I here? Where am I going?

Never allow yourself externally to portray anything that you have not inwardly experienced and which is not even interesting to you.

We have as many planes of speech as does a painting planes of perspective which create perspective in a phrase. The most important word stands out most vividly defined in the very foreground of the sound plane. Less important words create a series of deeper planes.

All art is autobiographical - if it's not, it's not going to quicken on-stage, and it's not going to come alive.

It is only when an actor feels that his inner and outer life on the stage is flowing naturally and normally, in the circumstances that surround him, that the deeper sources of his subconscious gently open, and from them come feelings we cannot always analyse.

The life of a character should be an unbroken line of events and emotions, but a play only gives us a few moments on that line - we must create the rest to portray a convincing life.

Don't go so deep in yourself that you no longer exist for your partner and for the character and for the play.

The language of the body is the key that can unlock the soul.

Play well, or play badly, but play truly.

The greatest wisdom is to realize one's lack of it.

The person you are is a thousand times more interesting than the best actor you could ever hope to be.

Unless the theatre can ennoble you, make you a better person, you should flee from it.

The actor must use his imagination to be able to answer all questions (when, where, why, how). Make the make-believer existence more definite.

Gratuitous cruelty borders on the pathological, psychotic and that becomes uninteresting because there is no choice.

A true priest is aware of the presence of the altar during every moment that he is conducting a service. It is exactly the same way that a true artist should react to the stage all the time he is in the theater. An actor who is incapable of this feeling will never be a true artist.

What is important to me is not the truth outside myself, but the truth within myself.

In spite of my great admiration for individual splendid talents I do not accept the star system. Collective creative effort is the root of our kind of art. That requires ensemble acting and whoever mars that ensemble is committing a crime not only against his comrades but also against the very art of which he is the servant.

The main difference between the art of the actor and all other arts is that every other [non-performing] artist may create whenever he is in the mood of inspiration. But the artist of the stage must be the master of his own inspiration, and must know how to call it forth at the hour announced on the posters of the theatre. This is the chief secret of our art.

In every physical action, unless it is purely mechanical, there is concealed some inner action, some feelings. This is how the two levels of life in a part are created, the inner and the outer. They are intertwined. A common purpose brings them together and reinforces the unbreakable bond.

When we are on stage, we are in the here and now.

The first theatre I ever found was in the backyard of a new suburban community in the foothills of the Poconos. My dad was a young FBI agent at his first or second posting - we're all from New York. He was posted in Scranton, Pennsylvania and he put the family in a brand new red-brick apartment. It was in a C-shape and behind it was a small hill that led up to the woods. There was a white-washed brick wall that was a perfect theatre! There were windows and all the ladies behind the windows in their apartments. I would go out there after lunch every day and sing opera.

Remember this practical piece of advice: Never come into the theatre with mud on your feet. Leave your dust and dirt outside. Check your little worries, squabbles, petty difficulties with your outside clothing - all the things that ruin your life and draw your attention away from your art - at the door.

Success is transient, evanescent. The real passion lies in the poignant acquisition of knowledge about all the shading and subtleties of the creative secrets.

Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art.

In talking about a genius, you would not say that he lies; he sees realities with different eyes from ours.