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.
UTA HAGENWorking with Brando was fun. It was like a tennis match. We played unbelievably well together.
More Uta Hagen Quotes
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We had a relationship that lasted 44 years. Herbert and I lived together 10 years before we were married. He always gave me a little heart for whatever anniversary.
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Marlon was so sensitive, you thought the poor guy just had a bad education.
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It must be noted that it is often the colleague or direct disciple of a new thinker who gets stuck in literal interpretations of the work, tending to freeze the new ideas and language into an inflexible, static condition.
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Thoughts and feelings are suspended in a vacuum unless they instigate and feed the selected actions, and it is the characters actions which reveal the character in the play.
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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.
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Awards don’t really mean much.
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I love playing Chekhov. That’s the hardest; that’s why I love it most.
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To rebel or revolt against the status quo is in the very nature of an artist.
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Since the time of the ancient Greeks a democracy has depended on its philosophers and creative artists. It can only flourish by continuous probing, prodding, and questioning of the social conditions under which man exists and tries to better himself.
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For some strange reason, we believe that anyone who lived before we were born was in some peculiar way a different kind of human being from any we have come in contact with in our own lifetime.
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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.
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If you want a bourgeois existence, you shouldn’t be an actor. You’re in the wrong profession.
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Keep pace with the present. Take a trip to the moon. envision the future.
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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.
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We were not allowed to say, Screw, but we could say, Hump the hostess, because hump is in Shakespeare.
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