Joseph Joubert Quotes

As an actor, I function from a place of compassion and empathy - you have to believe 100 percent what your character is doing, because otherwise it will look like it's not real.

Make acting seem real and as if it weren't acting. Just make it real.

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

That's the thing about acting - you can't fake it.

I don't steer towards anything. I steer towards character and truth. If it's funny then so be it. If it's dramatic, so be it. I just steer towards characters.

In day-to-day life, our brain sends lots of signals. In acting, there are no signals. You have to believe in what you are trying to portray.

You have to believe that you are the character or the thing or whatever the hell you're playing.

The more ridiculous the character is, the more sincerity you have to bring to it.

It's challenging to take on something else that is not you and make it very real and have others be able to associate with it. It's wonderful to provoke thought.

Acting is trying to be absolutely truthful; to get audiences to believe that you are a dean, when, actually, not only are you not the dean, but if you walked into the building they'd probably throw you out. That's very hard.

Love scenes feel very mechanical. But our whole job is to make it look real.

I would never play a character that wasn't true. It's not a moral thing; it's just that it's more convincing if it's a little bit like me.

When I'm doing a role the one thing I ask is 'Is this believable? am I being truthful?'

Belief is everything when you're performing something. If you don't have the belief behind it, then that actually puts a shunt on the character. It's like, "Does the character believe this for a minute?"

Actors always want you to believe something else even though that's the truth and to do that well it's almost a dying art.

The stage is not only a world apart, it is a myriad of worlds, and in those worlds a man can have anything he fancies, if only he believes in what he sees.

Every role is approached in exactly the same way, you have to make it believable and that's all. Acting is really serious, like, pretending really hard.

I believe acting truly is harnessing the power of belief.

The function of the actor is to make the audience imagine for the moment that real things are happening to real people.

I love acting. I just love it. It's in my bones. I remember when I was a kid, I watched an interview with Dennis Hopper talking about Jimmy Dean on the set of Rebel Without A Cause. Jimmy said to him, "If you've got to cry in a scene, you've got to cry. Make it real." And that's all that I believe in.

My job is to try and present the most fully-rounded character that I can, and bring a performance that people believe in.

I'm the kind of person who if I was playing the role of someone who got shot, I'd probably want to get shot so I knew what it felt like.

It's into the same bag as E.T. and Yoda, wherein you're trying to create something that people will actually believe, but it's not so much a symbol of the thing, but you're trying to do the thing itself.

I was a terrific liar as a child, and I believe my lies. So it's a natural step into acting.

Acting is all about truth and honesty, and the sensitivity that's capable of transporting you.