Alan Rickman Quotes

I have just gained a deeper and deeper respect for acting and the whole art of it because you're really trying to live a life and to do the best justification for it.

Acting keeps me alert to people, and life. I don't know, there's something about going to work early in the morning, and having to stay alert and concentrated. Maybe that keeps your mind alive.

I think acting is a mixture of instinct, imagination and inventiveness. All you can learn as an actor is basic technique.

With film, it's all about the actor being able to feel the things that the character's feeling. It must do some strange things to your mind. Music I find much easier because you're being honest about where you are as a person.

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

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

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

You take what you know, and you put it through your own prism. If I play characters that break down or cry, it's Gary Oldman crying; it's not the character crying.

I don't believe actors who say they don't bleed into their characters. It's absolutely impossible not to.

What I find most interesting about acting is transforming myself.

I never considered myself a movie star, and I didn't want to become a movie star, because as soon as you do, you throw away that possibility of playing character. You really do. All of a sudden you're just an entity, you know?

Obviously an actor draws on his own experience.

I'm extremely happy, but I don't do love songs for the most part. It feels weird; that's such a personal thing to me. I'd rather live that in my real life and play a different character outside of that.

The actor should not play a part. Like the Aeolian harps that used to be hung in the trees to be played only by the breeze, the actor should be an instrument played upon by the character he depicts.

Actors will change their face, will change their hair, will change their voice, will disappear into the role. A movie star doesn't disappear.

I'm a method actress in my songs, which is why it's hard to sing them.

Whenever you're in any acting role you are mortgaging your own character.

With acting, you have to become someone else. That's the fun part of it for me - to step outside of yourself and become a character. I guess being Jimmy Cliff is a little bit of a character, too.

I felt that if I'm serious about acting, I would like people to see me as an actress. It's less of a stretch if I'm singing, unless I'm playing a character who sings.

The joy we get as actors is out of transforming ourselves into something that's not necessarily anything true to ourselves. And it's a power - not being yourself, and being in the role; it's just like another prop.

Some actors say they don't know themselves at all, and that's why they act: because they can disappear into other people.

What we portray on the ice is really important to us, and we love getting into character and telling a story.

I believe I am a character actor who likes to hide behind my characters.

I feel it's very important for an actor to believe in the character that he/she is playing and do full justice to it in order to convince others that you are the character you are portraying.

I was particularly proud of my performance as the Joker. I considered it a piece of pop art.