Jane Horrocks Quotes

Some actors say they don't know themselves at all, and that's why they act: because they can disappear into other people.

As an actor, you're always playing different people, so you yourself are always kind of going through an identity crisis.

I like to do things in which I'm playing someone else entirely.

One of the things I love about acting is that it reveals a certain something about yourself, but it doesn't reveal your own personal story.

Singing is an incredible expression and something that is important to me, but where I feel comfortable with how much I reveal about myself is acting. I enjoy the characters, the costumes, the wigs and just being a chameleon.

Acting is like free therapy! Trying to make people laugh or cry can be inspiring.

I use acting to get away from myself and to live in someone else's skin, and I do singing to get inside my own skin. I need them both for my emotional health.

The idea of transformation - playing something I'm not - is the bit I enjoy most about acting.

Acting is a form of confession.

You have to find out how to become the character.

What drew me to acting in the first place was disguise.

I think the reason I'm an actor is the joy I find from escaping and going to be somebody else. That's what I have fun doing.

At drama school, I always picked the really evil roles. It's a great way to deal with your everyday emotions.

As long as I can wear a wig I can be any character, and in real life I can be myself.

There's something safe about playing a character, but then it's like, 'Who am I underneath it all?'

Actors use who they are to be someone else, but I would hate to ever think I'm playing myself. It's imagining being someone else that is the key motivating thing for me. So when people want to know about me, it makes me a bit unnerved.

In my early shows, I wanted to put myself through a new childhood, disintegrating my whole identity to let the real one emerge. I became a human jukebox, learning all these songs I'd always known, discovering the basics of what I do. The cathartic part was in the essential act of singing.

That's the wonderful thing about acting - you play a role. It's about humanity, rather than labeling.

Acting is what I do with who I am.

I wasn't perfect and didn't have it together. I felt alone. So through acting, I decided to be a shape shifter and with every role become the character instead of being myself. It meant about 10 years of no one knowing I was the same person in every movie.

The more I can be the character, the further I can get away from myself, the better.

As I say, there's something that scares the hell out of me but it really makes me work hard in losing myself. I'm not really interested in me as an actor or being a personality player, or a Hollywood star. What's given to me is to become different people and to find the truth of that. That is really what I do.

When you play somebody's life, everything about your likeness, everything about the way you talk, whatever, has to become that person.

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.

I think there are parts of myself in every character I play.