"The only line that's wrong in Shakespeare is 'holding a mirror up to nature.' You hold a magnifying glass up to nature. As an actor you just enlarge it enough so that your audience can identify with the situation. If it were a mirror, we would have no art"
About this Quote
Clift’s tweak to Shakespeare is a little act of method rebellion: stop pretending art is neutral reflection and admit it’s selective amplification. “Holding a mirror up to nature” flatters the audience with the idea that truth is simply there, already legible, waiting to be reproduced. A “magnifying glass” is more honest - and more dangerous. It doesn’t invent new material, but it chooses what to enlarge, what to leave in blur, and how close to put our faces to it.
The intent is practical, almost technical: acting isn’t copying real life; it’s scaling it for the room. A film close-up and a stage gesture both do the same thing - they intensify a human signal until strangers can read it as their own. That’s why Clift lands on “identify.” Identification is the transaction: the actor heightens a private tremor (shame, hunger, tenderness) into something public without turning it into a lecture.
The subtext is also a defense of art against literalism. A mirror would trap us in recognition without transformation: you’d see yourself, nod, move on. Magnification creates distortion, and distortion is where meaning lives. It makes the familiar strange enough to notice, then familiar again through empathy.
Context matters: Clift emerged in mid-century Hollywood just as naturalism and “realness” were becoming a selling point. His point isn’t anti-realism; it’s anti-naivete. The craft isn’t to replicate life, but to concentrate it until it cuts.
The intent is practical, almost technical: acting isn’t copying real life; it’s scaling it for the room. A film close-up and a stage gesture both do the same thing - they intensify a human signal until strangers can read it as their own. That’s why Clift lands on “identify.” Identification is the transaction: the actor heightens a private tremor (shame, hunger, tenderness) into something public without turning it into a lecture.
The subtext is also a defense of art against literalism. A mirror would trap us in recognition without transformation: you’d see yourself, nod, move on. Magnification creates distortion, and distortion is where meaning lives. It makes the familiar strange enough to notice, then familiar again through empathy.
Context matters: Clift emerged in mid-century Hollywood just as naturalism and “realness” were becoming a selling point. His point isn’t anti-realism; it’s anti-naivete. The craft isn’t to replicate life, but to concentrate it until it cuts.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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