1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Stella Adler

Stella Adler Quotes

Stella Adler was an American actress and acting teacher. She founded the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York City and Los Angeles with longtime protégée, actress Joanne Linville, who continues to teach Adler's technique. Her grandson Tom Oppenheim now runs the school in New York City, which has produced alumni such as Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Elaine Stritch, Kate Mulgrew, Kipp Hamilton, and Jenny Lumet.

Irene Gilbert, a longtime protégée and friend, founded the Stella Adler Academy of Acting and Theatre in Los Angeles, and was instrumental in bringing Stella Adler to the West Coast to teach on a permanent basis. The Los Angeles school continues to function as an acting studio and houses several theaters. Alumni of the Stella Adler-Los Angeles school include Mark Ruffalo, Benicio Del Toro, Brion James, Salma Hayek, Clifton Collins Jr., and Sean Astin.



✵ 10. February 1901 – 21. December 1992
Stella Adler photo
Stella Adler: 15   quotes 2   likes

Famous Stella Adler Quotes

“You must get away from the real thing because the real thing will limit your acting and cripple you. To think of your own mother's death each time you want to cry onstage is schizophrenic and sick.”

Stella Adler

Obituary in New York Times

“Actors need a kind of aggression, a kind of inner force. Don't be only one-sided, sweet, nice, good. Get rid of being average. Find the killer in you.”

Stella Adler

Source: The Art of Acting

“Stella is theatrical royalty who instills in her students a sense of the nobility of acting. She dares her students to act, to lift their bodies and their voices, to be larger than themselves, to love language and ideas.”

Stella Adler

Foster Hirsch, "A Method to Their Madness" (1984), quoted in http://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/22/obituaries/stella-adler-91-an-actress-and-teacher-of-the-method.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
About

“In your choices lies your talent.”

Stella Adler

Quoted in Mark Ruffalo & James Lipton, "Stella Adler Technique" http://www.actingschoolsinlosangeles.us/stella-adler-technique/

“It takes three things to make it in this business: the tenacity of a bulldog, the hide of a rhinoceros and a good home to come home to.”

Stella Adler

Quoted in "The Advocate", 2 Feb 1999, p. 44

Stella Adler Quotes about life

“The theatre was created to tell people the truth about life and the social situation.”

Stella Adler

Quoted in Joan E. Kole, "Theatre and Aging" (2009), p. 1

“Use your creative imagination to create a past that belongs to your character. I don't want you to be stuck with your own life. It's too little.”

Stella Adler

Obituary in New York Times

“You can't be boring. Life is boring. The weather is boring. Actors must not be boring.”

Stella Adler

Obituary in New York Times

Stella Adler Quotes

“The teacher has to inspire, to agitate. You cannot teach acting. You can only stimulate what's already there.”

Stella Adler

Obituary in New York Times

Teachers

“What an extraordinary combination was Stella Adler - a goddess of full of magic and mystery, a child full of innocence and vulnerability.”

Stella Adler

Elaine Stritch, attributed without citation in Robert Barton, Acting: Onstage and Off (2009), p. 158
About

“Stella Adler was much more than a teacher of acting. Through her work she imparts the most valuable kind of information - how to discover the nature of our own emotional mechanics and therefore those of others. She never lent herself to vulgar exploitations, as some other well-known so-called "methods" of acting have done. As a result, her contributions to the theatrical culture have remained largely unknown, unrecognized, and unappreciated.”

Stella Adler

Marlon Brando, preface to Stella Adler: The Art of Acting (2000), ed. Howard Kissel, p. 7
About

Nature , Teachers

“Your talent is in your imagination. The rest is lice.”

Stella Adler

Obituary in New York Times

Imagination

“[Adler] established the value of the actor putting himself in the place of the character rather than vice versa … More than anyone else, Stella Adler brought into public awareness all the close careful attention to text and analysis Stanislavski endorsed.”

Stella Adler

Robert Barton, Acting: Onstage and Off (2009), p. 160
About

Similar authors

Meryl Streep photo
Meryl Streep 12
American actress
Sophia Loren photo
Sophia Loren 32
Italian actress
Zsa Zsa Gabor photo
Zsa Zsa Gabor 4
Hungarian-American socialite and actress
Mae West photo
Mae West 24
American actress and sex symbol
Marlene Dietrich photo
Marlene Dietrich 28
German-American actress and singer
Elizabeth Taylor photo
Elizabeth Taylor 33
British-American actress
Audrey Hepburn photo
Audrey Hepburn 21
British actress
Marilyn Monroe photo
Marilyn Monroe 149
American actress, model, and singer
Dolly Parton photo
Dolly Parton 36
American singer-songwriter and actress
Madonna photo
Madonna 107
American singer, songwriter, and actress