"What I loved about the acting class was that you got to think all day long about a person that wasn't you, and figure out why they were sad and what they wanted, what they dreamed"
- Beth Henley
About this Quote
Beth Henley’s reflection on the joys of acting class reveals the allure of escaping oneself by immersing in another’s experience. Acting becomes not just a technical discipline but an empathetic exercise, a doorway into other people’s minds and lives. The process she describes encourages actors to leave their own worries, hopes, and ego at the door and take on the vulnerabilities, wounds, and aspirations of a character crafted by someone else. By spending hours contemplating “why they were sad and what they wanted, what they dreamed,” the actor becomes more than a performer; they become an investigator of the human condition.
Henley highlights how acting is, at its core, about understanding others deeply, often in a way one may never analyze their own emotional landscapes. The classroom becomes a safe space for this exploration, a kind of empathy laboratory. The daily focus on someone other than oneself challenges the self-centeredness that can dominate ordinary experience. Instead, the actor is required to imagine suffering, longing, and joy through a perspective utterly distinct from their own. In a society preoccupied with self-expression and personal branding, this form of imaginative identification with others can be both liberating and humbling.
This approach also fosters curiosity about motivations and inner lives—a curiosity frequently absent in daily interactions. By investing attention in why a character is sad or what they yearn for, an actor sharpens their ability to listen, perceive subtle cues, and interpret complex emotions. These are not only artistic abilities but skills essential to compassionate living. Acting thus offers a rare opportunity for self-forgetting and for dedicating considerable time and imagination to someone else’s inner world, cultivating empathy and understanding as much as performance technique. Through this process, actors may find their own lives subtly enriched, their capacity for compassion and insight quietly enlarged.
This quote is written / told by Beth Henley somewhere between August 8, 1952 and today. She was a famous Playwright from USA.
The author also have 25 other quotes.
"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time"
"My sorrow, when she's here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane"
