Sense Memory Quotes

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

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

A great actor is simply just seeing him or herself, and reacting to what exists around them.

I was a serious method actor until I visited this site.

There's so much to learn about acting and performance in general... I mean, acting is a very complex art, and there are a lot more theories and methods and techniques to it than I think anybody would think.

My problem with the traditional acting method was that I never understood what you were supposed to be thinking about when you're onstage.

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.

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 think I'm more the method acting school.

In Method acting, you can't have preconceived ideas. You have to live in the moment. You have to keep yourself open.

I do the best I can - I know my way around [Russian method acting pioneer] Stanislavski, but I can't take myself seriously like that. I respect people who do it, of course. I just think I'm lucky to still be working at 73. You reach a point in life where you just think, "Show up, do your job, make sure the cheque's on the way," and that's it. I'm not hungry to do anything more, really.

From an acting point of view you need to look at what you're bringing in.

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.

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.

Almost everything I learned about being an actor came from those early years at the Actor's Studio.

I'm a big believer in sort of sense memory, like using something that you've experienced in order to put yourself in the position that the character is in.

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.

I think an actor can actually gather moments, memories and emotions for his next character. So, it's a constant work.

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

If you're not doing something right, you can feel it on stage, and if it isn't going well, the audience will tell you. A teacher can teach you sense memory and this and that, but until you get in front of an audience, you don't really feel it.

I love acting. I just love it. It's in my bones. I remember when I was a kid, I watched an interview with Dennis Hopper talking about Jimmy Dean on the set of Rebel Without A Cause. Jimmy said to him, "If you've got to cry in a scene, you've got to cry. Make it real." And that's all that I believe in.

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.

It's the nature of an actor to have to use sense memory.

At drama school I learned the Stanislavski technique, which uses sentimental memories and bits of your past to put real emotion into the scene.

Having a guy on a microphone yelling lines at you is counter to a lot of acting techniques.