For as long as I can remember, I have had a distaste of the ‘pretend’, although in my pre-Meisner-technique-trained work as an actor I thought this to be a flaw, rather than the asset I now realise it to be.
One of my core acts of service as an actor and as a teacher of actors is to be vigilant for pretence and nonsense, my own as much as others’. There is enough cynicism in the world already.
Peter Falk: “when you’re young, you’re looking for people to look up to, but you run into alot of people who make you the other way – not excited – cynical. There’s too much pretend, too much nonsense. [Meisner] was important to me, to my enthusiasm”
I transcribed this from the excellent video documentary of Sanford Meisner, which focusses on his work as a teacher of actors and his approach to training:
Lawrence O'Connor 