Actors, who should pride themselves on their singularity, are forever trying to be someone else. It isn’t necessary for you, the actor, to like yourself— self-love isn’t easy to come by for most of us— but you must learn to trust who you are. There is no one else like you.

Michael Shurtleff

Categorized in : Forever Self Pride

Listening is not merely hearing, it is receiving the message that is being sent to you. Listening is reacting. Listening is being affected by what you hear. Listening is letting it land before you react. Listening is letting your reaction make a difference. Listening is active.

Michael Shurtleff

hearing acting listening

Competition is healthy. Competition is life. Yet most actors refuse to acknowledge this. They don't want to compete. They want to get along. And they are therefore not first-rate actors. The good actor is the one who competes, willingly, who enjoys competing. An actor must compete, or die...Peacefulness and the avoidance of trouble won't help in his acting. It is just the opposite he must seek.

Michael Shurtleff

competition healthy opposites

Creating relationship is the heart of acting. It is basic. It is essential.

Michael Shurtleff

creating acting heart

Conflict is what creates drama. The more conflict actors find, the more interesting the performance.

Michael Shurtleff

acting drama interesting

Consistency is the death of good acting.

Michael Shurtleff

good-acting consistency acting

To go into acting is like asking for admission to an insane asylum. Anyone may apply, but only the certifiably insane are admitted.

Michael Shurtleff

insane humorous funny

Often actors ask me if I think they should go on trying to be an actor.

Michael Shurtleff

writing mean thinking

The first step to a better audition is to give up character and use yourself.

Michael Shurtleff

giving-up acting character

The moral: Don't settle for anything less than the biggest dream for your future Fight to make the dream come true.

Michael Shurtleff

moral fighting dream

An actor is looking for conflict. Conflict is what creates drama. We are taught to avoid trouble [so] actors don't realize they must go looking for it. Plays are written about...the extraordinary, the unusual, the climaxes. The more conflict actors find, the more interesting the performance.

Michael Shurtleff

play drama interesting

We don't live for realities, but for the fantasies, the dreams of what might be. If we lived for reality, we'd be dead, every last one of us. Only dreams keep us going...When you are acting, don't settle for anything less than the biggest dream for your character's future.

Michael Shurtleff

dream character reality

Acting in theatre or television or screen is only for the irrecoverably diseased, those so smitten with the need that there is no choice.

Michael Shurtleff

theatre acting choices

Every scene is a love scene. The actor should ask the question: 'Where is the love?'

Michael Shurtleff

actors scene should

An actor must make his needs (goals, wants, objectives) so strong that he is willing to interfere with the other actor in order to get what he needs. Interfering means getting in their way so that what you want is stronger than what they want.

Michael Shurtleff

strong order mean

Whatever you decide is your motivation in the scene, the opposite of that is also true and should be in it.

Michael Shurtleff

motivation acting opposites

Humor [in a scene] is not jokes. It is that attitude toward being alive without which you would long ago have jumped off the 59th Street Bridge.

Michael Shurtleff

long-ago bridges attitude

Every scene you will ever act begins in the middle, and it is up to you, the actor, to provide what comes before.

Michael Shurtleff

up-to-you actors acting

No matter how much we know about the other person, there is always something going on in that other heart and that other head that we don't know but can only ponder. And no matter how we explain ourselves to someone else, no matter how open we are, there is always still something inexplicable, something hidden and unknown in us, too.

Michael Shurtleff

inexplicable matter heart

Take nothing for granted. Make an emotional discovery as often as you can find one in every scene. Ask yourself: What is new?

Michael Shurtleff

emotional acting discovery

Most actors make themselves unhappy by searching for their sanity, by insisting on their normalcy; it's a grave mistake.

Michael Shurtleff

normalcy unhappy mistake