Aleksa Palladino Quotes

I don't really approach a character as to whether or not it's good or bad. I just approach a character as to where it lives in me.

It's such a private thing - 'my process' - I can just say that the work that I do is like therapy between me and the character.

In every character you play, as much as you hate to admit it as an actor, but there's an element of you that you bring to it. Either the character helps you discover that element of you or the other way around, where that element of you helps you discover the character.

I think it's nearly impossible to write something fictional without having it be about yourself in some way or another.

I see bits and pieces of me in all the characters in my films.

Art, in the first place, has to connect with yourself.

Acting is a very personal process. It has to do with expressing your own personality, and discovering the character you're playing through your own experience - so we're all different.

I think people will discover themselves in 'Ankahee.'

Ultimately, I don't think you can be a character who's completely alien or divorced from your own personality. It's probably true of every writer - it's probably true of every filmmaker, every songwriter - that, ultimately, every character you create is a facet of yourself.

I want the poem to be an experience - for both the listener and for myself.

Initially, I started writing music because I wanted to express my thoughts and get what was going on in my head out to the world.

I would say that 'After the Storm' is much more informed by my personal life than my other movies.

Filmmaking is so much about catharsis anyway. It's therapeutic.

Everything I make starts very personally.

This career essentially chased me down while I was on the spoken-word scene in New York. I kept hearing that my delivery of my poetry - which was very personal and cathartic at the time- was very moving to folks. People thought that I was an actress because of my delivery, when I was just dropping into the work and really pouring out my soul.

Actors, their greatest tool, their greatest resource is imagination. You can take things, power objects, you can recruit your dreams, you can access your memories and get there. So the idea is not to act but to just be.

One of the nice things about acting is that it allows you to open up to the other people within you.

Composers, like authors, have a lot in common. Our main goal is to connect with the listener emotionally.

As an actor, you always want to find a piece of who you are in every role you take on.

I think that to make something alive, instead of on a page, is an honorable task. And it turns me on.

There's never been anything I didn't love that I didn't connect with on a personal level because, to some degree, I projected upon it.

I'm not saying that I am all of my characters, but for me to bring a character to life, you've got to be able to find your own truth.

It's how I express myself - through storytelling and characters. They often reveal very intimate, vulnerable sides of myself.

The way I like to work is to attach personal experiences to what I'm doing, so it helps tremendously if I can write my own play under what the writer has written.

One of the things I like about acting is that, in a funny way, I come back to myself.