actresses-from-kansas

"I desire a white casket and a white shroud; white gardenias in my hair and in my hands, together with a white gard­enia blanket and a pillow of red roses."

"She had hoped for a breakthrough role and she told the press that she anticipated one coming, but it wasn’t forthcoming at all. And then on top of it, it traps her kind of in between white Hollywood and then the African-American community. She’s constantly kind of battling that, looking for a balance, to continue to serve the community but at the same time to serve her ambitions, which is to succeed in white Hollywood, and the cost is tremendous. It’s a tremendous personal price she has to pay."

"They didn’t even let her in the theater until right before she got that award. Someone came outside and brought her into the auditorium. She wasn’t even allowed to sit in there."

"She’s an artist who’s been resisting white domination with performance — up until she becomes involved in white show business."

"I think she was quite hopeful, and she wanted to share that success with others. She supported family, friends. People talk about how people would just come to her and she'd give out the money she had, so she's quite generous in that way."

"I knew that I could sing and dance...my mother would give me a nickel sometimes to stop."

"It has made me feel very, very humble, and I shall always hold it as a beacon for anything I may be able to do in the future, I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry."

"I’d rather play a maid than be one."

"Sometimes just wanting to do a good role, a great role, isn't a good enough reason to do it."

"Creativity is really about excess. And when you want to make something there is a kind of obsession that has to come with it in a healthy way, in a way that is intoxicating, you are engulfed by something."

"There is no higher level acting coach out there. She involves the heart, the intelligence, and the Spirit. She has deep intuition; she is a creator and a summoner. She has great power. I worked with her from the time I was 13 to the time I was 22. Sandra Seacat presents a way to do the work in a way that doesn't harm you, but actually evolves your being.... She is a mystic with technical prowess and you feel safe with her from the start. She does not publicize, she does not reveal who she works with, you can't find her easily and she is not cheap. But if you find her and work with her...you will come closer to your potential than you ever have in your life."

"Ward's first reading before producers David Wolper and Stan Margulies was disastrous. So she hired drama coach Sondra Seacat,⁅sic⁆ who also helped turn Jessica Lange from King Kong's consort into the soulful actress of Frances and Tootsie. According to Margulies, Ward's second reading "was so breathtaking that she got the part right there."✱"

"A former Actors Studio student ("I sat there for a year, waiting for the teacup to develop in my hand"), he relied on the training of a drama coach, Sandra Seacat, and "that's when everything started to click.""

"He found New York drama coach Sandra Seacat, whom he credited with "channeling all it was that was messing me up into something creative and challenging.""

"The company of U.R.G.E.N.T., which is producing 'Natural Affection' as its first offering, is a capable one. Sandra Seacat exhibits a fine range of emotions from nervous joy to fits of despair and is always under control. She is well supported by Nathan George as her lover and Patrick Duffy as the returning son."

"Concerning the performances [in "Economic Necessity"], I was most impressed by Sandra Seacat as the sometimes sympathetic, sometimes terribly cruel wife."

"In Sondra's [sic] class, we had dream assignments where, before you went to sleep, you'd write out an assignment to yourself and dream dreams that had connections to the work you were doing. I've done that with this play."

"As a friend who abandons when she falls on hard times and then justifies it as honesty, she caught the smooth, unconflicted heartlessness of an entire class."

"The cast is a staggering one – Elaine herself, likewise Jeannie, as well as Peter Falk, Melanie Griffith, Marlo Thomas, Olympia Dukakis and Louise Lasser. The director was an interesting choice: Sandra Seacat, acting coach and guru to many stars."

"They are mostly excellent; a few are better than that; one young man named Romeo Mizzaro and one young lady named Sandra Kaufman ✱ must certainly be destined to bring many future stages alive with searching subtleties (his) and appetizing warmth (Miss Kaufman's)."

"I only wish Lee could have lived to see me portray a schizophrenic in Nobody's Child. I never could have gotten near playing that kind of part without Lee's exercises, and the subsequent work I did and continue to do with his primary disciple, the brilliant Sandra Seacat.”"

"She's extraordinary. She made me work in a totally different way than I'd ever worked before. For the first time, I really worked on technique... It was definitely not an easy five months. It was a lot of tying things together and understanding and confusion and frustration and anger. I asked a lot of questions about acting and about me and stuff, and Sandra just had these answers, and they were just like, of course, oh my God, of course!"

"Becoming Meggie Cleary was Rachel Ward's most arduous undertaking. She botched her first reading, distracted by the prospect of another film offer, and the producers let her agent know there wouldn't be a second reading. Suddenly, it mattered. "Say anything, say I was ill, see if they'll have me back," she instructed her agent. Ward then signed on with drama coach Sondra Seacat,⁅sic⁆ whose clients include Jessica Lange and Mickey Rourke of "Diner." ("Maybe I should keep quiet about it," Ward giggles. "Maybe I'm not going to do Sondra's reputation any good.") But after five intensive days of study she did a screen test and got the part. [...] Before Seacat's tutelage, Ward thinks, her acting was largely "jumping in, crossing my fingers and hoping it would go all right." Now, though, she has a technique that is "very Method" and "working from the inside out" and "learning about my instrument." She's sure that her professional evolution is there on the screen for all to see, which both gratifies and mortifies."I hate everything in the first show; I hope people don't judge my performance by it."✱"

"There are two main things about Julian – he has a big heart and he goes the distance."

"I have the utmost respect for her because, even as an established actress, she still comes to class. She still works on developing herself as an artist."

"The real thing she wanted was to play women with real depth, and a challenge, and something that she could resonate with – women that had intelligence and strength, and maturity and passion. [...] She's very close to her family – her parents, and her sisters, and her brother; very, very bonded. At some point she became aware that this is where her roots are. [...] She was always a wonderful mother. And it didn't make any difference how difficult the scene was, after the meal, Jessica spent that lunchtime with Shura, and was totally into Shura. [...] Anyone would be attracted to Sam, I would think. He's a very intelligent person and a very sweet person, first; and then he's so talented; and, on top of that, he looks great. He has a look like a pioneer, and that's very exciting. Maybe not for everybody, but it certainly would be for Jessica."

"Look, I'm working with Meg Ryan. I've never done this before, but she's doing amazing work. You should audition her."

"Laura is a free spirit. She's also a great student and a dedicated artist – and there aren't very many people I call artists. But the entire cast of this film, they're all true artists, dedicated to their own inner truth, and they have the courage to share that. You don't find that very often."

"I think what he went through as a child was very heavy. He never got over his mother leaving his father, and following her mother to Florida, to an area that was very different, and losing his father. When he was seven years old, this was a very sensitive boy, who was wide-eyed and trusting, and not knowing how to protect himself at all."

"He wanted private sessions. And he would come for privates, and he would give me a handful of cash; and I found out several years later that sometimes he wouldn't eat for two or three days in order to pay me."

"I think what Kazan is saying is that the Method isn't a thing. It's an action, a process, a skillful or effective way of achieving a specific artistic task. It's not a pair of shoes. It's discovering how to walk. I did an affective memory at the Actors Studio years ago, after which Lee Strasberg said, "Now that's an affective memory. Darling, tell them how you did it." When I explained my process, Strasberg replied, "That's not how you do an affective memory! But that's what the Method is all about. It's a way of work!" You find your own way of carrying out your own and your character's internal truth—within your body, mind, and soul."

"I believe that the artist is a wounded healer, that they are healing wounds of their own, and when they do that truthfully, they heal the audience."

"Laura was born an authentic artist, and, coming together, my job was to help her bring all of it forward and out. [...] The artist is a shaman; a wounded healer. We have wounds that we want to bring forth through the material. It's joyful, it's painful, but not painful in a bad way. And when you do that, you also heal people in the audience."

"My main focus while teaching is that the actor learns to fully express their own uniqueness and truth as a human being, and break through the patterns and blockages that prevent them from living fully and truthfully that part of themself that is the character, onstage or in front of the camera. We train and rehearse with very specific exercises that reveal the actor to himself and to the audience and also give the actor the courage to express who he is and to trust in himself and his instrument."

"Sandra was like a fairy godmother that takes the mists away and helps you see that Meg is emboldened by material she loves."

"[Y]ou strip yourself of ego, and the whole experience unearths all your analytical feelings and self-discovery. [...] It's better than any therapy."

"Finally I found a technique and a few teachers that allowed me to find my footing and I began to work more honestly and deeply as an artist. David Schermerhorn and Sandra Seacat initiated me to myself in a way and I discovered a whole new way of working that I still draw upon today as a director. I always felt something was missing, and I learned to access myself more fully and that really helped me move onto becoming a director which I love and feel fully engaged in. [...] David and Sandra taught me to use everything. Allow all things to be part of the scene and live and also to allow and embrace emotional opposites to happen. In fact, encourage them. Sometimes subtext lives here and that is treasure."

"She impacted and inspired my life in ways that only God could have orchestrated. Her love for people, her love for life, her love acting let me know. As she would always tell me, "You can heal people through your work as an actor, you can inspire people through your work as an actor." And that truly made me see the higher purpose in the art that I do."

"Through studying and through being raised on movie sets, I was surrounded by a lot of people who believed that the more tortured the person, the greater the artist. I always had a hard time understanding that, but thought, "I guess that's the way it is." Luckily, through life and the gift of the acting teacher who's changed my life in so many ways since 1984--her name is Sandra Seacat--I learned there's another opinion, which is: the better the person, the better the artist. The more true you are to who you are and the more honest you are as an individual, the more honest you can be as an actor, and I'm really liking that."

"Well, amazingly, a few friends had worked with her. I did Smooth Talk and Treat Williams said, "You would really love my acting teacher," and brought up Sandra, who was in New York at the time. And then I became dear friends with Rosanna Arquette and she said, "You know, you have to know Sandra Seacat. You really need to know her." And she was very passionate and helped me get into her class, because she would sometimes come to L.A. and do workshops. And then I did Blue Velvet, and she was coaching Isabella. So it was literally, like, three in a row. And so, I was like, "Oh, my God, I have to." So then I begged her. And then I started studying with her in class and, pretty quickly, would also work with her privately on a film, character development and whatever it was."

"Well, she was trained at the Actor's Studio, so people would label it Method acting and, as were my parents, I'm a child of and a student of that. And all my teachers have sort of been in similar schools, Peggy Feury and The Studio and Lee [Strasberg] — I had the privilege of auditing his classes and sitting beside him a bit, and that was amazing. So it's all of that. But what Sandra brings to it — or gave me, since I can only speak for myself, and I'm sure she works very differently with different people — is a deeper interest in the, you know, as Gregory Peck called it — and I had never heard it until he deemed it as such — "the healing arts." You know, he was like, "Wow, you chose the healing arts." It's just so beautiful, to consider it as an opportunity to heal oneself and others through questioning the complications of being human, whatever that means, not in some, you know, preachy way, but in a genuine way. And so that's what she is deeply interested in."

"I like working with Sandra and with directors who embrace flaw and mistake as wonderful opportunities to learn how you want to do it on the next take. It's just a beautiful way to work, and it's incredible that my teacher guides me in the same way. It's the opposite of Whiplash. Sandra's the opposite of Whiplash."

"Sandra lived by seeing magic and possibility in everything. She met the discovery of character and story with equal protectiveness, irreverence, humility and grace. She taught us the practice of investigating healing through acting. But more than that, she invited us to know ourselves as artists and humans in ways I could’ve never begun to explore without her. She’s been my teacher since age 17, and I had the honor of acting alongside her several times. She is my whole heart."

"In 1987, when I was 19, I was studying musical theater at Boston’s Emerson College. My sister, Tricia Leigh, told me about a summer acting retreat in Italy. Mom paid, so off we went. For six weeks, we lived in a villa and worked with acting coach Sandra Seacat. Her method included a deep, intense excavation of self that was designed to free yourself emotionally. It also allowed you to apply the technique when creating a character. We worked from morning to night, and I felt on the precipice of my life. One of Sandra’s exercises included a ritual to help us understand who we were. For me, I had to find my own identity, separate from my parents. Then I was expected to share my discoveries with the class as a performance."

"Yeah, I do. I’ve worked with a couple of people that are actually mother and daughter. Sandra Seacat is the name of the mother, and Greta Seacat is the name of the daughter, and they’re both witches. They’re both just these genius witches."

"It is impossible to express who Sandra Seacat is and was and will forever be. She is a true legend in the sense that she lived the most virtuous life one can imagine. A life devoted to profound service and healing through art. She was a revolutionary, a culture-changing teacher of acting and storytelling. She is a beacon for all of us of what a life of deep meaning and beauty can look like. And she was irreverent and forever playing like a joyful, unbridled child. I feel grateful beyond words to be able to call her my teacher, my acting partner in Under the Banner of Heaven, my mentor and my friend.”"

"Sandra totally changed my acting. Instinctively, I was always in love with psychology and my dream life had always been very important to me. Ever since I was 15 years old I had been writing down my dreams. What's really exciting to me about Sandra's work is that it changes your life, almost on a psychic level. Now I'll get parts and in working on them, she'll say, 'Well, let's see how you're developing, as a human being.' Because the parts you're doing, it's no accident. Those parts affect your life and they kind of illustrate the map that your life is following."

"I had a wonderful acting teacher, Sandra Seacat, and one of the things she taught was she'd put a book on a chair and all you did was ask questions about that book: is it a good book or a lousy book? Who made the binding? Why don't I want to read it? Why would I want to read it? How long has it been sitting there? It's a very simple exercise but I do that all the time, constantly question myself and my surroundings, not in a negative way but in a positive way that leads toward my character."

"There was a woman named Sandra Seacat and she was very much a mentor in connecting up your spirit or soul with the part of acting you are going to have strength in, so then you have the strength to believe in yourself."

"She really changed things around for me. She got me at the moment where it was all beginning to come alive, and it was a great catalyst for me."