Stella Adler Quotes

36 Sourced Quotes

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
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
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
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
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
The imagination is closer to the actor than real life-more agreeable, more comfortable.

Stella Adler
The theatre was created to tell people the truth about life and the social situation.

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

Stella Adler
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.

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

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

Stella Adler
Your talent is in your imagination. The rest is lice.

Stella Adler
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
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.

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

Stella Adler
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
You must get away from the real thing because the real thing will limit your acting and cripple you. To think of your own mother's death each time you want to cry onstage is schizophrenic and sick.

Stella Adler
The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place. It is the place people come to see the truth about life and the social situation. The theatre is a spiritual and social X-ray of its time.

Stella Adler
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
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
You can't be boring. Life is boring. The weather is boring. Actors must not be boring.

Stella Adler
Get a stage tone, darling, an energy. Never go on stage without your motor running.

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

Stella Adler
Actors need a kind of aggression, a kind of inner force. Don't be only one-sided, sweet, nice, good. Get rid of being average. Find the killer in you.

Stella Adler