Orson Welles Quotes

I know what I like in other actors: truth. That's the best. It makes you say, 'OK, I'll go with you on this.'

That's the thing about acting - you can't fake it.

The more ridiculous the character is, the more sincerity you have to bring to it.

I would never play a character that wasn't true. It's not a moral thing; it's just that it's more convincing if it's a little bit like me.

When I'm doing a role the one thing I ask is 'Is this believable? am I being truthful?'

As an actor, I function from a place of compassion and empathy - you have to believe 100 percent what your character is doing, because otherwise it will look like it's not real.

In really good acting we should be able to believe that what we hear and see is of our own imagining; it should seem to be to us as a charming dream.

Make acting seem real and as if it weren't acting. Just make it real.

You have to believe what you say, and if you believe what you are saying, then acting is easy.

The most important thing in acting is honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made.

I think that you have to find a piece of yourself in every role you play. If you don't believe what you're doing, you cannot expect anyone else to believe it.

Even if I'm playing a superhero, it has to be steeped in reality.

Acting is trying to be absolutely truthful; to get audiences to believe that you are a dean, when, actually, not only are you not the dean, but if you walked into the building they'd probably throw you out. That's very hard.

If I don't believe in a role, I can't pull it off.

Everyone is usually screwed up in some way and that is usually where the work comes in - figuring out how to make it believable and make it real to present someone's problems that you don't necessarily actually know anything about.

I'm lucky that people believe me when I'm in character.

You don't want to play a character you can't inhabit or commit to fully.

You can't make people believe in you if you play a horror part with your tongue in your cheek.

Trust the acting.

I do crazy amounts of research. I want this stuff to 'work,' so to speak. I need to be, at least to me, believable - because if I feel - if I cannot invest some element of verisimilitude, the reader is absolutely not going to buy in.

I get very involved in my roles. I want people to think it's all really happening. If I'm in it, I'm in it.

The only way to make a scene realistic is to do it the way you know it would really happen.

Everything that I can do to ground the story in reality helps make it harder for people to be dismissive of it.

Sometimes in entertainment, when people have done the Academy Awards - like, for example, in 'The Bodyguard' - I just didn't believe it; it didn't feel authentic.

Acting means nothing unless it's truth. And honesty.