Becoming the Character Quotes

I don't pretend to be the character. I am the character.

There's a lot to be said for getting really comfortable in a character.

If you think about what acting is supposed to be, my job is to disappear.

In acting you have to not be yourself. It's like whatever character is put on, you have to just to turn into that person.

It's not that easy, but the moment the camera is switched on, I have to mould myself to breathe life into the characters I portray.

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

I really do literally put myself into a character's shoes.

To embody a character, you have to lose all judgment about them.

There's a lot of traps you can fall into when you are playing someone who existed. If it comes out just as impersonation, that's bad; it has to be an embodiment. You have to live it, not just sound and look like it.

The approach to acting is always the same, you try to figure who the guy is and then you try to transition your way into his way of thinking and moving through the world. The rest of it is just accoutrements, you don't play the makeup, you play the guy. If you're not wearing makeup, you just play the guy.

It is precisely as though I were possessed by some other spirit when I enter on a new task of acting, as though something within me presses a switch and my own consciousness merges into some other, greater, more vital being.