Quotes About Meisner

Being an actor is a religious calling because you've been given the ability, the gift to inspire humanity. Think about that on the way to your soap opera audition.

Sanford Meisner taught actors never to look at the punctuation in a script. His belief was that it would force you into giving a particular line reading that might not be your own—meaning that you would get stuck in a certain way of saying it instead of following the impulses arising from your intention.

I've trained primarily in Meisner Technique, and I've done a little bit of Groundlings and Upright Citizens Brigade just to get my feet wet in the improv world because I think that's really important. But most of the teachers I've worked with, I've gotten, like, references through agents or managers, and they're sort of independent.

My favorite kind of acting scenes, or at least where I think people shine the brightest, are odes to Meisner technique scenes where people are face-to-face, and it's almost like a repetition exercise.

Meisner technique was different than anything I'd ever experienced. It's a really great way to be accountable to your craft and to yourself, but also it takes that kind of focus and dedication to learn anything.

My acting technique is a combination of a lot of different ones. A lot of it is Meisner.

Less is more" was one of Meisner's mantras. "Silence has myriad meanings. In the theater, silence is an absence of words, but never an absence of meaning." Most of all, Meisner urged his students to think of acting a role as "living truthfully under given imaginary circumstances.

I studied technique for ten years, from age 7 to 17. I guess you could say I went more on the Stanislavski side than the Meisner side - there's always that wide divide among actors when it comes to technique.

I stopped modeling so I could go to drama school at the William Esper Studio. It's Meisner.

Every time I am reading actors I can pretty well tell which ones have studied with Meisner. It is because they are honest and simple and don't lay on complications that aren't necessary.

I took Meisner for a long time. I use a lot of sense memory and, well, I wouldn't say Method, but I can't really avoid getting into character.

When I got out of high school, I was working in restaurants in New York City, when I heard Bill Anderson from The Neighborhood Playhouse was doing private lessons. I started taking classes, and it was a lot of improv and Meisner and repetition.

I went to theater school, and if I spent time with one school of thought in this whole acting game, it's the Meisner approach of improvise-based acting. This does not mean that you improvise your acting, but that you focus on the other person.

There was only one elective at my college for acting, but thank God for that elective because we had a great teacher who introduced me to the Meisner technique for acting. Once I read that book, I said, 'Wow, if I could do that and have that honest moment on stage, that would be amazing.'

I studied with Sandy Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse. I was in the last class to study with him before he had his larynx removed, so I actually remember the sound of his voice. He was an incredible teacher.