Farhan Akhtar Quotes

My approach as an actor has always been the same, in that the greatest gift that you're ever going to have is your imagination because you're not going to have all life experiences. So you draw on things that are sort of close to it but you spend your time expanding on it or drawing something specific on whatever your situation is.

Acting isn't necessarily pretending. It's storytelling. It's giving someone your perspective on something.

I still love finding the soul of the characters I play and defining who they are. This to me is my paint set, and the colors are always exciting to choose.

Listen, acting is not surgery, it's entertainment. You're doing something to hopefully move people, to make them laugh, to transport them. But actors are vulnerable, and the reason we're vulnerable is that we're always trying to recreate human behaviour.

For a writer, they say write what you know. As a performer, you find it in yourself, in your heart. You relate to the character. You try to live it, try to have it be real for you.

I think you ultimately have to love who you're playing. You have to have that kind of feeling. You have to have passion for the person.

Every time you get on a stage or in front of a camera, the whole exercise is about imagination. You're constantly depicting something that doesn't exist, and trying to find the reality of it. Once you settle on that premise, everything else is a matter of degrees.

An actor's job is about putting across the author's intention; I don't think of myself on the same level as a creator.

I don't have any training as an actor, but I guess I'm an intense pretender. When you read something over and over, it gets into you a little bit. You can't help but begin to feel it, even if you're a healthy person as I think I am.

It's great fun if you get a good piece of writing and you can pretend to be someone else, tell a story that needs to be told, make some kind of connection. I've always fancied myself as a leading man, but I really doubt whether anyone else sees me that way.

Definitely in voice-over, you have to be completely uninhibited. More than that, you have to put yourself back into the enjoyment of pretending.

You can't judge a character that you're playing, because then you're fighting against doing what the character's doing.

As an actor, what you dream of is being able to portray people that people empathize with and understand and really feel for.

I think it's always easier to play parts that you have something concrete that you can relate to.

Every actor turns everything round to their character.

I liken every character that I do to a relationship that you're in.

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.

I enjoy acting, and I appreciate people who have passion about what they're doing and have a vision about the film they're trying to make.

If I wasn't an actor, I never would have known who Debbie Gallagher was. I never would know how her feelings are or how her emotions are, or her family.

My mum is a theatrical person. I saw a tape of a theatre project she did when I was a kid. I was really affected by the idea that my mum could turn herself into someone else for the purpose of telling a story.

When I write, I try to become different characters.

With any character, you have to put part of yourself into it because we are the soul that brings that character to life.

In all my characters, I try to find an iota of myself, and in Castle, I found a lot. He gets away with a lot, so that's fun.

For as long as I can remember, the thing that gave me a sense of wonderment and renewal... has always been the work of other actors.

It's sort of the most important thing for acting, is to listen to the person you're dealing with.