John Malkovich Quotes

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'm sort of a reverse Method actor. In my personal life, I become my characters. After 'One Tree Hill', I started dressing in Converse and ripped jeans and hoodies. On 'Awkward', it manifests in how I speak.

My acting career began on the streets of New York. When I was a cop, I played many impressive roles, from derelict to a doctor, and my life often depended on my performance.

Acting has always existed alongside my normal life. It's been a case of learning on the job. I've worked in so many styles, with so many people, so I've picked bits up from everyone and everything.

I didn't study acting.

It's not good just to have life experience of film-making and that's all. It's hard to play a real person when you've been in jets and town cars for three years.

I think the buzz of acting is playing people different to you, and for me, that means traversing all genres.

The whole thing about acting, the draw for me, is the opportunity to do things you don't get to do in real life.

I love to play different roles. That's just the kind of actor I am.

Like any other actor, I draw on life experience.

Really I just want to get on with my job, which is to pretend to be lots of different people. Simple as that.

It's been a lot of fun getting to work with Tracy Middendorf, who plays my mom. As an actor, it's always fun to have different parents and to create different familial dynamics than you have in your real life.

In acting, you have to pull from real-life situations, from people, to help develop a character.

Actors are investigators.

Being an actor all of my life is kind of a collaborative, social form of interpretive art. Sitting down with a blank page every day by yourself is a different feeling.

As much as I know people love the method and what you can draw out of yourself, a lot of acting is very imaginative.

Acting is the only medium were people think they can just stand up and do it because they can say lines, but that is not so much the case. You have to study styles and techniques.

I haven't actually studied acting at all.

Some of the best times I've ever had in my life have been because of acting and through acting. But I'm not interested in the game of acting and being an actor and auditioning and all that stuff.

To be an actress and act crazy is really fun for me, to be able to be acting like you'd never be able to act in your real life and scream and freak out. It's an interesting test for an actor.

I'm a task-oriented actor. A pretender. And I try to invent my process anew each time I make a new project. So I frown on any method.

A lot of actors and actresses pull from past experiences.

We play many emotions in our careers, emotions that in real life we would perform just once. For example, my character has died in about 10 films, so you have to keep searching for different ways to do it!

When you're acting, you can try your own ideas and be free.

The work of acting, in and of itself, is something that is infinitely enjoyable.