Michael Harney Quotes

Those things that we probably are ashamed of as human beings, certain things that no one would ever talk about - as actors, when we transform into a character, we empathize with those moments.

So you can't judge the character you're playing ever.

At the end of the day, you have to find the humanity in you in each character.

I try and find a way to love every character I play.

Every single character I've ever played has a little bit of me in them just because every single human in the world has a little bit of everything in them.

I don't think there's a certain part of a character I take with me. There's a certain part of me I leave with each character, though.

I'm sure there's pieces of me in all the characters I play.

In all my characters, I try to find an iota of myself, and in Castle, I found a lot. He gets away with a lot, so that's fun.

In all of us, there is a struggle between the good and the bad. It makes it more palpable and real to play such people as an actor.

I love acting and really taking on another person, another life.

I tend to get comfortable with the dialogue and find out who the person is in the script and try to hit that. People are sort of independent of their occupations and their pastimes. You don't play a politician or a fireman or a cowboy - you just play a person.

I often play women who are not essentially good or likable, and I often go through a stage where I hate them. Then I end up loving and defending them.

I was worried for a while that it was some sort of reflection of me that all I seemed to be getting were these characters that were a tad bit loony. But I love it. Those are the most fun characters to play!

Nobody's really unsympathetic, I think. People do good and bad things. If a character's totally unsympathetic, they're not real and I'm not interested. Even the real monsters have to have a spark of something you can relate to.

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

Most good actors have a huge intelligence about the human condition and a real open heart to different kinds of people and behavior.

I always try to find something I admire about every character I play.

One of the things I like about acting is that, in a funny way, I come back to myself.

When I was acting, I got trained in creating a character as a three-dimensional person. If you're doing it right you should be able to draw an audience into the character's world and make them feel their fears.

Sometimes you can just step into the character, and you get all your feelings and emotions just from sympathizing with her and being her. But then, other times, you just have to resort back to anything that you've been through in your own life and try to play that.

It's absolutely true that it's almost impossible to play a character without having any affection for him.

I love to act because I love trying on other people's skin.

I don't want to discredit people's individuality, but I think people are pretty much the same. People are very similar. If you have a good enough imagination then you can feel things that you personally have never done before. That's acting.

In my acting, I have tried to do this - to present to audiences a living creature in whom they can recognise themselves or someone they know.

In order to inhabit a character, you've got to embrace and empathise with them.