Norman Mailer Quotes

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

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.

I think of myself as an actor. The duty of an actor is to be able to impersonate anything - a child, an old man, a tree, a chair, a woman.

Standing in public in other people's clothes, pretending to be someone else. It's a strange way for a grown man to make a living.

My profession is to change myself according to my role and I work hard on it.

I've always been an actor. That's my job — I can be anything you want me to be.

Marlon once said to me about being an actor: Can you imagine going to work every day and pretending to be someone else?

Acting has been described as farting about in disguise.

Central to being an actor is pretending, and the adventure of it all. That's why you become a junkie for different kinds of situations.

As an actor, I'm thankful I have lived not one life, but many.

Sometimes you can do Shakespeare and you're still not an actor.

I would compare it to an actor. I drive myself into the character that later on is in the ring.

Where can I go that would give me the same level of satisfaction as an actor?

When I'm on stage, I'm not me playing me. I'm somebody else doing me. I could never go on stage and be like, "Hey, I'm Mike Tyson. My mother and father was in the sex industry." That's the politically correct way to say it, but I would really say, "My mother and father were pimps and whores. This is my life." I could never do that as Mike Tyson. Because I'd feel sorry for myself. But if I could be objective about it and be somebody else, portraying Mike Tyson, saying this story, then it's easy sailing.

I'm an actor. I'm trying to be the character and do what they're doing.

When you are an actor, you bring a tool in your craft but you are not that person.

I became an actor so I can show you characters and never have to show you me.

What I like doing is being a different person. Every character is kind of different. So being able to be that person and then when you leave you're yourself again. So it's kind of weird to be like two different people, and I think that's kind of fun.

We play different people - our art form is performance art - so unless you're playing the same type of person, I don't know if you could improve or make it worse.

I wanted to be an actor. Maybe a comic actor, but an actor. That's what got me into acting was putting on an act, because in life, I wasn't funny and I felt on stage or in the movies, I could do whatever I wanted to. I was free.

One of the things I love, more than anything, is jumping around and playing lots of different parts. I love the variety of playing different characters.

I love anything that kind of removes me from myself and employs something else. So, I love accents and I love pretending.

The thing I like about acting is being able to lose yourself completely in someone else.

As an actor, I feel like I'm somebody who, when somebody gives me a mark, I don't want to hit it. I don't like that. But then, without even knowing it, I just hit it.

One of the gifts of being an actor is that you get to learn new things see the world through different eyes.