Stephen Dorff Quotes

As actors, we get to hide. You can change your hair and your accent, and it's not you. You have tricks, these masks.

They have become part of us in that if we get dressed up as them, we don't actually have to have a script. You can just become them. You just become nervy.

An actor is someone who pretends to be somebody else. A movie star is somebody who pretends that somebody else is them.

I knew I could never be an actor as a man. It just doesn't work, you know? And so when I was doing drag, I realized I could do that kind of stuff, and then when I was transitioning, I kind of gave up on the whole thing because I didn't think that this time would ever come, you know?

Actors act... Their job is to become this character. And I have, in fact, seen Sam Heughan become Jamie and Caitriona Balfe become Claire right before my eyes. It was an astonishing transformation.

It's great to be an actor, and it's great to embody something more than who you are.

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

Transformational acting was the reason why I became an actor in the first place. Your hair and make-up and the costume are the tools that you have, and it makes you feel like that person. When you look in the mirror, you don't feel like yourself, and it changes the way you move. I love that stuff.

If James Franco's wearing a costume, and I'm wearing a motion capture suit, we don't act any differently with each other because of what we're wearing. We're embodying our roles.

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

The best advice my dad ever gave me is that acting is believing. Acting is not acting. It isn't putting on a face and dancing around in a mask. It's believing that you are that character and playing him as if it were a normal day in the life of that character.

The art of acting is to be other than what you are.

Pretending to be other people is my game and that to me is the essence of the whole business of acting.

I think actors are attracted to the idea of other identities and concealing themselves behind some other identity.

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

Costume is a huge part of getting into character. Your body soaks in what you're wearing, and you turn into someone else.

The right costume determines the character, helps the actor feel who he is, and serves the story.

Oh, completely liberating because even if you don't do a woman right, you just have to put on high heels a wig, a bra and a dress, and I feel liberated.

You don't become the character.

When people think of performing they usually think of show-offs, but I think of it more that you disappear into somebody else.

You have to let the costume inform you.

Let me put it this way. There is more to acting than just acting like somebody. I like to act in such a way that other people get some notion of what it's like to be somebody.

As an actor, my body is my tool to flesh out the roles I play.

The cool thing about being in drag, just like getting to play a role in a play, is that you get to play a fantasy and you get to play someone else that you're not used to.

The process of acting is no different [playing human or ape]. You're embodying the character. You're creating the psychology and the physicality. You're living the moment.