Uta Hagen Quotes

12 Sourced Quotes

For some strange reason, we believe that anyone who lived before we were born was in some peculiar way a different kind of human being from any we have come in contact with in our own lifetime. This concept must be changed; we must realize in our bones that almost everything in time and history has changed except the human being.

Uta Hagen
To rebel or revolt against the status quo is in the very nature of an artist.

Uta Hagen
We must overcome the notion that we must be regular... it robs you of the chance to be extraordinary and leads you to the mediocre.

Uta Hagen
One cannot demand of art that it pay you in any other way than in the satisfaction of the work itself.

Uta Hagen
Keep pace with the present. Take a trip to the moon. Envision the future.

Uta Hagen
Talent is an amalgam of high sensitivity; easy vulnerability; high sensory equipment (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting—intensely); a vivid imagination as well as a grip on reality; the desire to communicate one's own experience and sensations, to make one's self heard and seen.

Uta Hagen
The need to be loved and protected is at a peak when we feel abandoned and are particularly vulnerable to difficult circumstances.

Uta Hagen
Thoughts and feelings are suspended in a vacuum unless they instigate and feed the selected actions, and it is the characters actions which reveal the character in the play.

Uta Hagen
The actor must know that since he, himself, is the instrument, he must play on it to serve the character with the same effortless dexterity with which the violinist makes music on his. Just because he doesn't look like a violin is no reason to assume his techniques should be thought of as less difficult.

Uta Hagen
The knowledge that every day there is something more to learn, something higher to reach for, something new to make for others, makes each day infinitely precious

Uta Hagen
It must be noted that it is often the colleague or direct disciple of a new thinker who gets stuck in literal interpretations of the work, tending to freeze the new ideas and language into an inflexible, static condition.

Uta Hagen
More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.

Uta Hagen