“What they teach in these acting schools is incredible, hair-raising crap. The Actors Studio in America is supposed to be the worst. There the students learn how to be natural - that is, they flop around, pick their noses, scratch their balls. This bullshit is known as "method acting." How can you "teach" someone to be an actor? How can you teach someone how and what to feel and how to express it? How can someone teach me how to laugh or cry? How to be glad and how to be sad? What pain is, or despair or happiness? What poverty and hunger are? What hate and love are? What desire is, and fulfillment? No, I don't want to waste my time with these arrogant morons.”

—  Klaus Kinski

Source: Kinski Uncut : The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1996), p. 59

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "What they teach in these acting schools is incredible, hair-raising crap. The Actors Studio in America is supposed to b…" by Klaus Kinski?
Klaus Kinski photo
Klaus Kinski37
German actor 1926–1991

Related quotes

Klaus Kinski photo

“How can anyone believe that you can "learn" how to feel and learn how to express it? How can anyone teach another person how to laugh and how to cry? How to be cheerful and how to be sad? Teach them what pain is, and despair, and desire, and passion? Hate and love? How can anyone waste their own and somebody else's time with that idiocy? But far worse than the morons who think they can learn these things are the people who claim they can teach them. In the end, they teach bad manners. If one of their trained poodles sits down in public, he doesn't sit, he slouches - which is supposed to mean that his behavior is "natural." He or she scratches his or her head then picks his or her nose, which is supposed to mean that he or she has no complexes and acts very spontaneously. So this is what New York talk shows look like.”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

On method acting. p. 313
Kinski Uncut : The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1996)

“You can't control everything. You can't control how someone feels about you. Or what makes them tick. You can only control how you react, how you act, how you think and feel.”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: Rush

Berenice Abbott photo

“People say they have to express their emotions. I’m sick of that. Photography doesn’t teach you how to express your emotions; it teaches you how to see.”

Berenice Abbott (1898–1991) American photographer

Art News, January 1981.

Bono photo

“And though your soul it can't be bought, your mind can wander. I can feel your love teaching me how, how to kneel.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

"Vertigo"
Lyrics, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004)

“What gays and lesbians have to teach other Americans is that morality is how you live and how you conduct yourself, not what you happen to be.”

Michael Nava (1954) American writer

Source: Non-fiction, Created equal: Why gay rights matter to America (1994), p.142

“Schools teach exactly what they are intended to teach and they do it well: how to be a good Egyptian and remain in your place in the pyramid.”

John Taylor Gatto book Dumbing Us Down

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), p. 14

Oscar Wilde photo

“We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: The Critic as Artist

Miguel de Unamuno photo

“Physiology does not teach us how to digest, nor logic how to discourse, nor esthetics how to feel beauty or express it, nor ethics how to be good. And indeed it is well if they do not teach us how to be hypocrites; for pedantry, whether it be pedantry of logic, or of esthetics, or of ethics, is at bottom nothing but hypocrisy.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), XI : The Practical Problem

Jacques Barzun photo

“The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it.”

Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) Historian

"Reasons to De-Test the Schools," New York Times (1988-10-11), later published in Begin Here: The Forgotten Conditions of Teaching and Learning (1991)

Related topics