John Larroquette Quotes

As an actor, you can't just imitate someone. You have to get under her skin.

Even when you are playing someone who is real, you get their mannerisms and you get their little quirks, but, it still has to be something inside of you that connects with the role, or else you will not be any good.

If I'm doing my job as an actor, the audience knows everything I know about the character.

Obviously an actor draws on his own experience.

The trick to acting is not to show off, it's to think the thoughts of the character.

Bad actors try to cry, and good actors try not to. Bad actors try to laugh, and good actors try not to.

Sometimes you read things that people don't even notice in a performance, that you just are moved by or understand that this actor is really living his or her life on the screen. The first time I realized that was when I watched Brando in 'On the Waterfront.'

When I act, I try to understand the character, why she's behaving like that.

To give a successful character portrayal on stage or on film, the part has to be played inside of you.

The actor's job is to put themselves in the shoes of the character they are trying to portray as truthfully as possible.

None of the characters I've played are really like me. That would be boring. That wouldn't be acting.

So much of movie acting is in the lighting. And in loving your characters. I try to know them, and with that intimacy comes love. And now, I love Voldemort.

What I mostly do is take the script, analyse the hell out of it, see what's in there, see what kind of person I'm dealing with, and then forget I'm playing a father and just play a person who exemplifies all those things.

As long as you have the acting chops and the desire to get inside a character, you can play anything.

As an actor, you're sort of the court-appointed lawyer for the character.

Ultimately, the idea of acting is to understand the people you're playing, and then where they're coming from is not so mystifying. You've got to detox a bit after, though.

I try to allow the spirit of the character to live through me. That's the only way I know how to approach acting. I have to live it.

In terms of likeability, that's something that I don't think about as an actor when I approach a role.

I like to rehearse with the actors scenes that are not in the script and will not be in the film because what we're really doing is trying to establish their character, and good acting to me is about reacting.

I've never been a method actress; I've never been that person that wants to imagine horrible things happening in your own life in order to exploit them for your emotional being in the movie. I'm just not good at doing that.

I think good acting is always character acting.

For me as an actor, you always sort of want to bring yourself to a character in some way. You want to find a way to approach something in a way that's real and interesting, and also so there's some empathy there.

The better the acting is, the harder it is to see what the process is.

I've always done method acting. I'm a method actor, and I've done that for years. I never did acting and decided to take it seriously because all the parts people want me to do were playing the pretty role. If I want to play someone pretty, I'll play myself.

Whether it's a very dramatic part or a comical role, I feel I need to create the same thing: a full-fledged, three-dimensional character that the audience can identify with.