Tina Fey Quotes

There are still actors who use emotional memory, affective memory, which was Lee Strasberg's emphasis, not his total emphasis. She taught everything at the Actor's Studio. But nevertheless, she felt that it impeded her.

I was always drawn toward the Actor's Studio. I studied at the Lee Strasberg Institute when I first came to New York. One of my favorite teachers was one of Al [Pachino]'s teachers, a guy named Charlie Laughton, who was just a wonderful, wonderful man.

Method acting? There are quite a few methods. Mine involves a lot of talent, a glass, and some cracked ice.

I think I'm more the method acting school.

For the actor, The Lee Strasberg Notes are an indispensable companion.

I grew up the son of an acting teacher but I've never been really good at articulating what that process is. It was always a bit more internal.

I've dealt with a few method actors, and I don't know if should say this, but I think it's a bunch of nonsense. I think it's film acting and you just have to be on when the camera is rolling.

I always think upon Lee Strasberg with warmth, and reviewing his wisdom is a pleasure.

I am not a method actor, though I studied for a year with Lee Strasburg.

I have no idea what 'method actor' means.

I didn't learn anything about acting until I joined the Group Theatre. They taught me an entirely new approach, an entirely new technique.

All of modern acting comes from Stanislavski, who was the Russian partner to Chekhov. When Chekhov was writing his plays, Stanislavski was running his theater. And Stanislavski really was the first inventor of modern acting and then everything that came out of the method and Stella Adler and the great teachers really came out of him.

As an actor the best thing you have is your imagination. You're not going to have all the experiences, but you draw on the things that you know. So I think you definitely use the things that you're familiar with to your advantage.

I love to act, I've always wanted to be an actor. I think that acting and fiction go nicely together - being able to visualize language as something you perform, not just something that's there on the page.

Acting is telling the truth under imaginary circumstances. I cannot think of a worse way to describe acting. Also, I'm the worst liar ever.

The notion that acting is simply about intuitively responding to situations the way you feel couldn't be farther away from how I ask actors to work.

There's probably no one who understands Method acting better academically than I do, or actually uses it more in his work. But it's funny - nobody really sees that. It's perception versus reality, I suppose.

I remember in one of my early films I had a drunk scene. It was Kiss Me Goodbye, with Sally Field, and I was playing this kind of nerdy guy who gets drunk and dances. And so I thought, "Oh well, I'll just get drunk and do the dance." And it was wonderful, but then I had the rest of the day, and the next day. So I learned that you don't really have to do the things that your character is doing. But us actors, we use something called sense memory. I've certainly been drunk before, and part of my job is to recall that without getting drunk.

Bette Davis had a phrase that called it "cigarette smoking acting" .

As an actor, you use the things from yourself that you can apply to the character.

An actor definitely has to be in the past a well as the present; an actor must react to past experiences every minute, every second.

I really, specifically, love acting, and I think it's a really cool thing to be really indulgent and follow that.

I hate the word "method acting." It's just so silly. You hear people going, "Yeah I'm a method actor." I'm like, "So what happens if you're playing a period film or something? You're in the Second World War. And what happens when your mom calls you on your phone? Do you go, 'Oh! What is this strange talking brick device?'" No. It's stupid. But you do everything you can to get in that mindset.

When I'm creating a character, it's a little bit like what my theater teachers used to tell me about Stanislavsky, like if you're using sense memory to do a scene - if you have to cry in a scene, you try to remember something in your life that made you cry and you use that in order to get the tears.

It kind of varies. I don’t have a method yet. It depends on the script and the character I think I need. I’ve worked with acting coaches, researched roles, and channeled different parts of myself. It’s on a case-by-case for me, right now.