Vittorio Gassman Quotes

I always wanted to play a mental patient. I was fascinated with playing crazy people in college, and I don't know if I ever quite perfected it.

There's a fine line between the Method actor and the schizophrenic.

Actors love mental disorders, dialects, and corsets. Give them one of the three and they're happy.

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

I'm sure I'm a schizophrenic. The problem is I can't tell the difference between which one's which, which one is the real me.

I've joked that I would have either become schizophrenic or an actress, but as an actress you can do both.

When I was playing a psychopath in 'Happy Valley,' it was really weird.

Actors who say they can dive inside a character are either schizophrenic or lying.

The disturbed individual who believes himself to be Christ, or to receive messages from God, is something of a cliche in our society. Ever since Sigmund Freud, many people have associated religiosity with neurosis and mental illness.

Seeing, say, 'My Left Foot,' and 'The Last of the Mohicans.' How is that the same person? Or people like Johnny Depp, who can play Jack Sparrow and Edward Scissorhands. I am so interested in the transformation, in not knowing anything about them and watching somebody create a character. I'm not really interested in personalities.

When I do a film, it is about how I become a character.

Acting has always been something I've wanted to get into. I think the best models are actors; you're taking on a character. In that sense, I have been acting for a long time. It didn't seem like a crazy transition.

I just love to act. I like to get away, totally play a different character, someone you can get really involved in knowing. I've gotten really involved in some characters and written down little summaries of where they live and what their families are like.

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

An actor is an impersonator; he plays many different roles. If you played the same role all the time, God - that'd be a boring career. When you take on different roles and become a different person, that's called acting... It's a challenge.

I love acting... I really do. I love crawling into another character's skin. That's something that I've always, always, always, always wanted.

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.

Acting is therapeutic.

That's why I enjoy acting: getting in the mind of someone else.

Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.

Sometimes I think of movie acting as advanced pretend.

I'm a character actor and I get lost in these characters, so I think it's only recently that people have begun to connect dots and go, 'Oh, that's the same person that did this, this, this, this and this!' which I take as a compliment. One time somebody called me an illusionist, and that was the nicest thing anyone has ever said.

If I ideally can, I'd do a comedy, and then I would do something where I'm a mental patient, and then I'd go back and do a comedy so I can continue to express myself in different ways.

Yeah, I think the common denominator - and this is probably going to sound like Acting 101 - but the common denominator is belief in the character in the moment.