Peter Sellers Quotes

In all my years as an actor, I had never been me - I had always hidden behind my glasses, mustaches and funny voices.

I do everything in the third person. Performance is about being someone else.

Onstage, I am a devil. But I'm hardly a social reject.

Acting is like a Halloween mask that you put on.

Acting is magical. Change your look and your attitude, and you can be anyone.

I start the show, and the armour goes on, and the showman comes out. When the show is finished, that comes off, and I become soft centred again.

I felt very comfortable playing Don Draper, because I knew that Don Draper is a character - that Dick Whitman is playing Don Draper. I felt very comfortable in that manufactured-confidence mode. He himself is manufacturing it.

As an actor, there are so many different people to hide behind.

I've been doing this since I was 10 years old, inhabiting different people and playing different roles.

I'll accept being Phoebe to people for a while longer, given how much fun it was. That's totally fair.

On 'Old School,' I was not an actor, I was Snoop Dogg, so I came to the set with a whole different vibe, and a different crew of people. And on 'Starsky and Hutch,' I was more of an actor. I wasn't Snoop Dogg, the rapper.

As actors, we get to hide. You can change your hair and your accent, and it's not you. You have tricks, these masks.

I'm always in disguise in one form or another in my plays.

As an actor, we spend so much putting the mask on and trying to be someone you're not.

I'm not really an impersonator.

At least when you're acting you can be someone. In front of the camera you have to be yourself. And who am I?

The woman who made those movies, that's not me. She's someone else.

All my work's been disguise, really: hiding behind the character.

I always feel like I'm an actress.

People tend to think that's your life when you're playing a role.

I was always amazed the way people would come in looking one way and transform completely to the point where I couldn't recognize their language, their accent, the way they looked, their hair, their face even changed becoming so inside of the character.

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.

When the camera comes on, I am not Hayden any more, I am Lizzie!

I was going to say that writing is about disclosure and acting is about obfuscation, but that's such a little lie. Both of them are about obfuscation and masking oneself.

So far, the thing I seem to have been rewarded for in film is leaving myself behind and transforming myself into other people.