Nicolas Cage Quotes

My fun as an actor and my task as an actor is to transform myself to become other people. I enjoy becoming characters but I don't enjoy becoming caricatures. The research I do is only necessary in so far as we move into other dimensions.

I don't worry so much about the audience. I want them very much to be involved and enjoy the movie, but I try to just inhabit the character in a full way, where I can create a personal stake.

I never like to go out of character when filming starts. I fear that if I do, I might not be able to pick it up again.

I guess because I pay so much attention to the physical part of the character, I don't look upon it as like Charlize Theron up there. I don't think of them as like Charlize Theron films.

I don't act in the way other actresses act, in terms of building or creating a character. I don't transform myself into the role, I invest myself in the role.

I was at Pepperdine University in Malibu, and during my sophomore year, I played a dying burn victim on 'ER.' The makeup artist put burn makeup all over my body and I couldn't move or eat for 12 hours. I lost 8 pounds that week.

I don't shoot two films at the same time. I finish one character and get into another character because I change my look for every film. It's difficult, but I enjoy doing that.

I'm always happier and a better actor when I can really lose myself in a character and become somebody else.

I kinda lose my mind in 'Fringe,' or at least my character does. Whenever I'm acting, I tend to accidentally become unable to switch off the character. I'm a little bit of a method actor, but without really wanting to be.

I'm a Method actor. I spent years training for the drinking and carousing I had to do in this film.

I'm no Method actor. I've tried staying in character, and it's just exhausting.

A lot of acting, as I grew up wanting to do, is kind of like magic... I'm not comparing myself to him in the least bit, but if you knew what Daniel Day-Lewis was doing every step of the way and what he was eating, I don't think when he popped up as Lincoln we would quite believe it.

Getting in and out of a character takes its own time for me.

Getting into character to become 'Pretty' Ricky Conlan for the 'Creed' film was surreal.

It's interesting what happens when you take on a role, I think. What happens to me - without sounding too spiritual or too hippy, I guess - what happens, most of the time, you do a lot of research, and you get into the character, and at a certain moment, it's like the character takes over.

Sometimes you even start to sound like the character because you're living and breathing them every day on the set. It gets into your bones.

It becomes very easy as an actor to immerse yourself when you're in the real places.

I don't feel like you can fully find the true character until you're in his wardrobe, on set, and really getting into the scene. And that's when you really find out who your character is.

That's when you're laughing the hardest because you're not really in character. You're just trying to learn the moves, but once they call, "Action!", you're in it and it's like you transport yourself to a different place.

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

When I work on a film, you know, I try to get or inhabit the body of the character -from the vision of the directors or how i think the character should be - so if it's a film like SPEED, you hit the gym, you get to do some, train with SWAT People, hehe, but in general, I'm really focused and dedicated, and then in regular life, I don't go to the gym as often.

The process of acting is no different [playing human or ape]. You're embodying the character. You're creating the psychology and the physicality. You're living the moment.

I use a lot of sense memory and, well, I can't really avoid getting into character.

What I didn't realize about television was that's true of acting, as well. You have that space of time to develop who you are, and you can use more and more of yourself. The lines between that character that I'm playing and myself become more and more blurred and, after awhile, they just disappear, altogether.

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. Acting is a bigger step into modelling in a way. Modelling is easier when you don't look like yourself. When you look like a different person, you feel different. Acting goes deeper into that, you have to move and talk like that character. I love it.