Morgan Freeman Quotes

As an actor, you use the things from yourself that you can apply to the character.

As an actor you bring some of your own experiences which can make things easier. You build off of it, but your imagination is always the best thing you have as far as creating things I think specifically for what that character is going through. But you're definitely drawing obviously upon things that you can connect to, and then you kind of mold the change that you're making into something that's right for the character.

Even when you think you can detach yourself from the characters, you don't. Because you're spending so much time trying to realize this person and make them real that they do infect you, in a way. And you do take them home and live with them, even if you think you're turning the character off. But in order to pull off a role convincingly, you wind up thinking about that person all the time, and it does sort of creep into you. And then there are things that you'll respond to, or react to in a very different way than you would normally.

That's your job as the actor, to understand the human part of the character, to make it real.

One of my jobs as an actor, regardless of who I play - even if I'm playing a despicable character - is to make people think that that character could exist, that he's real, and the way to do that is to make him believable. He doesn't have to be likable or charming, but he just has to be believable. That is someone who I could see on a bus. That is someone who I could walk past in the street.

When somebody is talking to you about something terrible on set with lines, and you believe what he says, sometimes it gives a strange vibe, because you wonder when that person is talking if he's talking about something that really happened to him and he's using the character.

I try to put myself into whatever character I play.

I love acting and really taking on another person, another life.

That's what acting is. You're pretending to be someone else.

When you take on a role, even if the character is somebody that you are dissimilar to, you have to identify with the role and look for an emotional connection even if there is not a biographical one.

You use your emotions to try and find them in the character that you're playing.

The trick to acting is not to show off, it's to think the thoughts of the character.

I don't even draw on my life experiences when I'm acting. I just try and make it feel like I'm living through that person's skin.

When you are playing someone who is dealing with issues on a really personal level, if you don't bring your own issues into the equation, it's not going to feel really personal to the people watching it.

I'm not a method actor. I try to stay separate but to imagine what they'd feel, to put myself in their shoes.

As an actor, you can't just imitate someone. You have to get under her skin.

Once you're playing someone, you shouldn't be judging them in any way. That's what being an actor is - it's having empathy for people that are different from yourself. Once you've committed to that person, your responsibility is to tell that story.

As actors, we have to take characters, and we have to feel for them and ultimately become them, and share that on screen so that audience feels that.

It was new to play a woman who plays with her sincerity, and who is a seductress, a manipulator and a liar! I was able to compose a character as opposed to being very natural, so it was very interesting for me. It was great to realise that I could be this kind of real woman!

For me, the key is always trying to find the connection between the audience and the character I'm playing. That's important to me, in any work I do.

The job of the art is to really convey and support that empathetic response. I always try to find where the character is mushy, and then bring that to the forefront.

By the end, you should be inside your character, actually operating from within somebody else, and knowing him pretty well, as that person knows himself or herself. You're sort of a predator, an invader of people.

It's never very useful to see your character as a villain. You have to play them the way they see themselves.

The first thing, the main thing, about how I work is I need to understand the character.

When you play a real person, you feel a sense of responsibility that obviously you don't feel when you're playing a fictional character.