01/30/2025
“In addition to having a respect for acting, you must have a sense of protection for those who act, the places in which they act, and for the audiences who appreciate the art of acting. Everyone benefits from the arts, but not everyone is an artist. Not even an artist can be a good artist all the time: We all fail. But we try to approach our work as an artist, and we accept our failures as an artist. We move on and try again. We make a terrible mistake—to so, so many—when we lower our standards in a misguided attempt to include more people in what has always been a very small circle of artists. No one stays in the circle for long or too many times, but we have to hold to our standards.” Uta Hagen in interview with James Grissom/1996.
Photograph, from 1995, by Jack Mitchell.
