Prunella Scales Quotes

If you can sell that you're the King of Scotland, or Henry V on a tiny stage in a studio theater somewhere, then you can probably sell that you're a starship captain or a time traveler.

I think acting is a fun thing because you get to have so many lifetimes in one lifetime, being all these different people.

What I love to do requires portraying different characters, and you have to separate your life from the role.

When I was in theater I was forever trying to inhabit a space which puts yourself under the microscope as an actor and your personality and your take on life, but actually through another portal of a character.

As an actor, whether I'm playing Othello on stage or David Estes on 'Homeland,' that ability to give into your imagination is something that I enjoy.

Acting is the ability to dream on cue.

Creating a character and living truthfully through her is a whole different ball game. It's all part of the same person but it's a much newer medium for me.

Being an actor myself I realize that all actors believe they are qualified to play any role. If you showed me a script with a black woman character I would tell you that I could do it. That is what we do. We act as if we are someone else.

Sometimes I think of movie acting as advanced pretend.

That's what acting is. You're pretending to be someone else.

The idea of transformation - playing something I'm not - is the bit I enjoy most about acting.

Everything, I think, about acting is based on imagination.

I think the buzz of acting is playing people different to you, and for me, that means traversing all genres.

The most fun you can possibly have as an actor is to walk that line between what's real and what's interesting.

What I like about acting is that you can be a different person every day.

Being an actor means asking people to look at you. I guess I accept that. But it's a profession in which the job is to show another world and other people. You may access it through bits of yourself, and your imagination and experience, but actually, in the end, you're not playing yourself.

Interestingly, the actress who, in her own persona, may be gentle, shy, and socially awkward, someone whose hand trembles when pouring a cup of tea for a visiting friend, can convincingly portray an elegant, cruel aristocrat tossing off malicious epigrams in an eighteenth-century chocolate house.

Preparation is definitely important, but it depends on the kinds of roles I do. Like, I completely identify with my character in 'Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani.' I had to be myself and I didn't have to actually prepare for it.

I think the challenge for an actor is always to see which parts of you you can explore and go have fun with.

You know, the truth is that us actors would all like to believe we re-invent the wheel, every time we play a character. But, we're human beings and our instruments are not violins, they are our bodies and our consciousness and our collective life experience.

I'm an actor. I try to play a character in a really cool story, the very best I can.

As an actor, if you were to simplify what acting really is, it's about letting go.

The great thing about acting is that you get to be a lot of different things in one lifetime. You get to explore different personalities and characters.

That's the joy of getting to be an actor - getting to play all kinds of different roles and showing so many different sides of yourself.

As actors, you play people who are not yourselves!