The article deals with the evolution of the theatre critics’ outlook on the actor and acting in the earliest stage of Lithuanian theatre criticism. The texts by critics reveal the graduate shift of their attention form the almost completely literary matters connected with the issues of the dramaturgy to the problems of scenic representation. This shift has lead to the formation of the concept of acting where acting was perceived as “the reflection of the idea of author”. Actor’s approach to his creation gained two different conceptions during the discussed period due to the two characteristic utilitarian and more autonomous outlooks on the theatre, where actor’s intellect and skills were emphasized in the first and intuition and emotion in the last.