Uta Hagen Quotes

“I'm a bad liar; I don't know what to say backstage.”

— Uta Hagen

“We must overcome the notion that we must be regular ... it robs you of the chance to be extraordinary and leads you to the mediocre.”

— Uta Hagen

“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.”

— Uta Hagen

“I won't go to England because they won't let my dog in.”

— Uta Hagen

“Once in awhile, there's stuff that makes me say, That's what theatre's about. It has to be a human event on the stage, and that doesn't happen very often.”

— Uta Hagen

“We were not allowed to say, Screw, but we could say, Hump the hostess, because hump is in Shakespeare.”

— Uta Hagen

“I love going to the movies; I love watching good movie actors. They must know something I don't.”

— Uta Hagen

“If you want a bourgeois existence, you shouldn't be an actor. You're in the wrong profession.”

— Uta Hagen

“I have disassociated myself from that book.”

— Uta Hagen

“Working with Brando was fun. It was like a tennis match. We played unbelievably well together.”

— Uta Hagen

“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.”

— Uta Hagen

“They still had the Lord Chamberlain, so we had this idiotic censorship. We were allowed three Jesus Christs instead of 10. Why three were OK, I don't know.”

— Uta Hagen

“I love playing Chekhov. That's the hardest; that's why I love it most.”

— Uta Hagen

“Awards don't really mean much.”

— Uta Hagen

“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.”

— Uta Hagen

“Marlon was so sensitive, you thought the poor guy just had a bad education.”

— Uta Hagen

“Maybe the one I enjoyed playing most was A Month in the Country.”

— Uta Hagen

“Theoretically, the actor ought to be more sound in mind and body than other people, since he learns to understand the psychological problems of human beings when putting his own passions, his loves, fears, and rages to work in the service of the characters he plays. He will learn to face himself, to hide nothing from himself- and to do so takes AN INSATIABLE CURIOSITY ABOUT THE HUMAN CONDITION”

— Uta Hagen

“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.”

— Uta Hagen

No work of art is ever finished, nothing is ever static, no performance is for keeps.

— Uta Hagen

“The knowledge that every day there is something more to learn, something higher to reach for, something new to make for others, makes each day infinitely precious”

— Uta Hagen

All tedious research is worth one inspired moment.

— Uta Hagen

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 Hagen

One cannot demand of art that it pay you in any other way than in the satisfaction of the work itself.

— Uta Hagen

“The need to be loved and protected is at a peak when we feel abandoned and are particularly vulnerable to difficult circumstances.”

— Uta Hagen

“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. One of the first moves of a dictatorship is to stifle the artists and thinkers who have the ability to stir up dissent from any prescribed dogma which might enslave them. Because the artist can arouse the curiosity and conscience of his community, he becomes a threat to those who have taken power.”

— Uta Hagen

“To rebel or revolt against the status quo is in the very nature of an artist.”

— Uta Hagen

“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.”

— Uta Hagen

“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. This concept must be changed; we must realize in our bones that almost everything in time and history has changed except the human being.”

— Uta Hagen

“Keep pace with the present. Take a trip to the moon. envision the future.”

— Uta Hagen

“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.”

— Uta Hagen