Zooey Deschanel Quotes

The first time I made myself up, I was looking at my reflection in the mirror and it wasn't me looking back. It allowed me to do things I couldn't do as myself. I found out how powerful that was and how much that can mean to an actor.

I always think of the character as being me. But me wearing a 'coat', which may be a different way of speaking, moving or regarding other people. To me, acting is pretending, just like kids playing, only you pretend as if it were really, really real.

I'm an actor. I love to create.

My favorite thing about acting is that I can play all kinds of different people. Frankly, I don't consider myself a very interesting person, so the characters I play are usually much more fun.

One of the reasons I'm an actor is because I was no physical specimen as a child. I wasn't athletic and didn't have any prowess in that regard. Growing up in Kentucky, most little boys were trying to get into sports, and it was very competitive, so that was not to be. But I did want to do something.

I grew up dancing, so that was always my first dream. But I also have a passion for acting. I would love to step inside of a character and be somebody that I'm not, because I feel like it just gives me an outlet to express myself without being me.

It is always more fun to play a bad guy than to be yourself as you can create a character unlike your own and be someone you are not for a change.

I love acting because it's a bit of an escape. It gives you the ability to reinvent yourself. They say that acting is the shy man's revenge.

What attracted me to acting, from the start, was playing different characters. I'm not a massive fan of just playing myself on screen.

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

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.

Sometimes I think of movie acting as advanced pretend.

Of course you can find something exciting and dynamic in any character you want to portray.

Sometimes acting is really cool because it forces you to exercise certain muscles in your personality that you wouldn't normally be called upon in life.

That's one of the fun parts of becoming an actor: You can become whoever you want to be.

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.

For me, personality acting is not that interesting. I don't want to just be myself.

Don't think for a moment that I'm really like any of the characters I've played. I'm not. That's why it's called 'acting'.

I've always remembered something Sanford Meisner, my acting teacher, told us. When you create a character, it's like making a chair, except instead of making someting out of wood, you make it out of yourself. That's the actor's craft - using yourself to create a character.

I mean I tried to transform myself through characters throughout my career.

Acting is make-believe. I never believe I'm the character; I want you to believe.

If there is any sense of order to the universe, acting is what I am meant to do. I'm not manufactured. I know acting isn't real, that it's temporary. If there is any theme to the roles I play, it is emotional vulnerability and availability.

Acting has always been a way for me to express myself, and show all my vulnerabilities and flaws through my characters.

When I do my makeup, it kind of helps me get into the character that I'm trying to portray.