“Act before you think. Your instincts are more honest than your thoughts,” said Sanford Meisner, one of the 20th century’s most famous acting teachers.
Over several decades, Meisner taught a roll call of soon-to-be Hollywood greats, including Gregory Peck, Diane Keaton, and Steve McQueen. His approach, and the exercises he developed at New York’s Neighborhood Playhouse, became known as the Meisner Technique. Celebrated playwright Arthur Miller said he could spot those who had studied under Meisner “because they are honest and simple and don't lay on complications that aren’t necessary.” In a similar vein, Oscar-winning director Elia Kazan (who helmed the classic films On the Waterfront and East of Eden) said, “If you get an actor that Sandy Meisner has trained, you’ve been blessed.”
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“Frighteningly accurate” is how Tootsie director and former Meisner student Sydney Pollack described the practitioner in an introduction to the book Sanford Meisner on Acting. “You felt he knew every thought, impulse, or feeling in your head, that he had an ability to x-ray your very being and there was absolutely no place to hide.”
Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1905, Meisner first trained as a concert pianist at what is now the prestigious performing arts school Juilliard (but was then called the Damrosch Institute of Music). He later decided that acting was his real passion. In 1931, along with Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg, and Harold Clurman, he formed the influential collective known as the Group Theatre. The collective drew on the teachings of Russian actor and theatre director Konstantin Stanislavsky, who at the beginning of the 20th century revolutionised the craft of acting. His new, psychologically driven approach focused on channelling the inner life of a character and sought to create performances that were emotionally truthful.
As the group began to work with and adapt Stanislavsky’s methods, disagreements arose. Meisner rejected the use of emotional recall, in which an actor mines their own past experiences when preparing for a part. Instead, he believed that it was better for actors to use their imaginations to generate the emotions required for the scene.
In 1935, Meisner joined the Neighborhood Playhouse, where he began to formulate his approach. After a brief foray into Hollywood (where he appeared in a string of movies, including Tender Is the Night and Mikey and Nicky), Meisner returned to New York in 1962 and continued to lead the Neighborhood Playhouse’s drama department until the late 1980s.
Despite garnering a stellar reputation as one of America’s finest acting teachers, Meisner waited until he was in his 80s to set up his own schools. Along with his life partner James Carville, he founded the Meisner/Carville School of Acting on the Caribbean island of Bequia, where the couple had a second home. Then, a few years later, they opened another school in Los Angeles that is now known as the Sanford Meisner Center. Today, his techniques are taught by Meisner protegeés all over the world.
A bit of trivia: Meisner’s final performance, at the age of 89 – two years before he died – was as a patient in the popular drama series ER.
The methods Meisner developed were intended to help actors respond authentically to any given circumstance, relying on their instinct rather than their intellect. He famously said, “Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances.” Meisner believed that with the right training and preparation, an actor could authentically feel the required emotion in any scene.
Meisner also placed great importance on collaboration. Rather than actors arriving to rehearsal with their character’s responses and actions all worked out, he believed that they’d create a more authentic and dynamic performance by tuning into and responding to their partner throughout the scene. It’s a lesson Keaton took to heart, telling the LA Times: “The main thing that Sanford Meisner gave me – not really just for acting but life – is just be in the moment.”
Meisner was wary of the mining of the psyche favoured by his contemporary Lee Strasberg (creator of the Method), saying, “Actors are not guinea pigs to be manipulated, dissected, let alone in a purely negative way.”
There are three core elements that make up the Meisner technique: repetition, emotional preparation, and improvisation.
Repetition
Meisner created a series of exercises based on repetition. At its basic level, two actors face one another, then one says the first observation that comes into her head about her scene partner, such as, “You have blonde hair.” Her partner then parrots back that exact same word or phrase. If a mistake creeps in, like saying bond hair instead of blonde hair, then that becomes the new phrase to repeat.
This goes on for a minute or two until a third-party observer calls the exercise to a close. The next stage of the exercise begins in exactly the same way, with one actor making an observation about the other. Only this time, instead of imitating their partner, the other actor repeats the phrase in a way that feels natural to them. To an outside observer, it might seem like an odd, even pointless exercise. But the idea behind it is that it trains actors to always be listening and responding, moment by moment, instead of anticipating what they think will come next.
Emotional preparation
Meisner also understood that there are times when actors need to enter the stage or say their lines already in a state of heightened emotion (whether distress, rage, or jubilation) rather than allowing those feelings to bubble up organically throughout the scene. He taught his students what he called emotional preparation. This involves an actor daydreaming a particular scenario in order to create the required emotion. To generate sadness, for example, the actor might imagine receiving news that he has weeks to live. If the scene requires him to be overjoyed, he might imagine a call from his agent telling him he’s being offered the part in a major film. This approach deviates from some of Meisner’s contemporaries who thought actors should tap into their own – sometimes traumatic – experiences to conjure the required state of mind.
Improvisation
Improvisation is another key aspect of the Meisner Technique. Meisner would give his actors a set of circumstances and a character, but no script. Famed actor Joanne Woodward described such an exercise in a 1998 New York Times article: “I was doing an improv scene one day in which I had to ask another actor for $200 because I needed an abortion. His brother had knocked me up.” But Woodward couldn’t get her words out. “The other actor looked at me and started to laugh, and I just felt terrible. I started to cry and ran out of the room.” Though she thought she had messed up, Meisner said, “That's the best thing you've done in six months.''
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Meisner’s legacy is still going strong. Many of today’s most celebrated actors were trained in his technique, including Christopher Waltz, Naomi Watts, Timotheé Chalamet, Tom Cruise, and Sam Rockwell. And though Meisner encouraged the pursuit of acting for its own reward, these stars’ collective Oscar, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild awards speak volumes.