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.
life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one
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 is theatrical royalty who instills in her students a sense of the nobility of acting. She dares her students to act, to lift their bodies and their voices, to be larger than themselves, to love language and ideas.
It takes three things to make it in this business: the tenacity of a bulldog, the hide of a rhinoceros and a good home to come home to.
The teacher has to inspire, to agitate. You cannot teach acting. You can only stimulate what's already there.
What an extraordinary combination was Stella Adler - a goddess of full of magic and mystery, a child full of innocence and vulnerability.
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.
The theatre was created to tell people the truth about life and the social situation.
You can't be boring. Life is boring. The weather is boring. Actors must not be boring.
[Adler] established the value of the actor putting himself in the place of the character rather than vice versa … More than anyone else, Stella Adler brought into public awareness all the close careful attention to text and analysis Stanislavski endorsed.
Get a stage tone, darling, an energy. Never go on stage without your motor running.
In your choices lies your talent.
Your talent is in your imagination. The rest is lice.
