Uta Hagen Quotes

no work of art is ever finished, nothing is ever static, no performance is for keeps.

Usually, someone who’s in a show gets me a ticket. I feel cornered. I can’t walk out if I don’t like it.

If you want a bourgeois existence, you shouldn’t be an actor. You’re in the wrong profession.

Maybe the one I enjoyed playing most was A Month in the Country.

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.

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

Marlon was so sensitive, you thought the poor guy just had a bad education.

I’m a bad liar; I don’t know what to say backstage.

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

I think, by and large, the level of acting is mediocre. When I go to the theatre, I get so angry. I don’t go.

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.

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.