Thomas Haden Church Quotes

Like, that was weird in 'Hamlet 2,' because I played myself there, fully myself, but then I realized, 'Oh, I'm not playing myself. I'm some weird version of myself.' So as an actress, you're always playing something, I don't even know who I am, how could I become me? I don't know what that is.

At least when you're acting you can be someone. In front of the camera you have to be yourself. And who am I?

There's something safe about playing a character, but then it's like, 'Who am I underneath it all?'

Who cares about people's personal lives? I mean, honestly. How are you then able to disappear into a role?

The more I can be the character, the further I can get away from myself, the better.

I sometimes feel that I am trying to dig in the world around me. I'm involved in another kind of archaeology to look for another kind of truth, and the moment I find, the moment I am separated from that life, the moment I am sort of in a world, every time I have gone out and performed in the, in the cinema for example, if you do two or three films on the trot you suddenly have this impression that you're becoming separate or separated from the world around you.

Talk about impersonating an identity, about locking into a role, about irony; I went to cover the war and the war covered me; an old story, unless of course you've never heard it.

I've been doing this since I was 10 years old, inhabiting different people and playing different roles.

I think there are parts of myself in every character I play.

I want things to be characters and not me. Why would I want to play me?

I play a character every day of my life, and I don't want to play a character as myself. They can judge me as an actress, not as a person. I'm not a spokeswoman for Anna.

That's what I love about acting, you get to find little pieces of yourself in every character you play.

I'm always in disguise in one form or another in my plays.

As an actor, you're always playing different people, so you yourself are always kind of going through an identity crisis.

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

And it was the idea that you can do a play - like a Shakespeare play, or any well-written play, Arthur Miller, whatever - and say things you could never imagine saying, never imagine thinking in your own life.

You can spend a bit of yourself when you give yourself to a character. At the end of a job, you have to remind yourself who and what you are.

When playing a role, I would feel more comfortable, as you're given a prescribed way of behaving. So, both Facebook and theatre provide contrived settings that provide the illusion of social interaction.

I was like the class clown in school so I guess I would say I did like the attention. In church I did a lot of plays, my mother made me play characters, do a lot of drama and acting, trying to become someone else. So it helped me create who I am, to create Snoop Dogg.

It is therapeutic for me to act, to be able to slip into somebody else's skin, and know it's not you, but know that you bring a lot of yourself to it. At times in my life it's provided me with a lot of confusion. It's also provided me with a lot of discovery.

We don't think of them as acting, but we take on certain characteristics based on where we function, and those relationships draw out aspects of who we are as people. And that's what acting is. Different parts draw out different parts of your nature.

You have to find out how to become the character.

People seem to sometimes have a difficulty drawing that line between the character and the person.

One of the things I love about acting is that it reveals a certain something about yourself, but it doesn't reveal your own personal story.

Often, when I finish a film, I'll have that feeling inside me: 'I never want to do this ever again. I don't want to pretend anymore. I want to be myself and do that.'