Peter Dinklage Quotes

Acting is about covering up traces of who you are and just being the character. I think it's easier to accept people in roles if you don't know a lot about them.

There are lots of wonderful actors doing animated films these days, but I prefer it when you can't recognise them - it means they've really become the character.

As an actor, I think it's really important to be as anonymous as possible. It's your job to convince people that you are somebody else, and so any recognition I'd get away from the screen - well, it's not something I actively seek. To be honest with you, I'm surprised anybody does.

If you're playing your character and you're running into all these people who know who you are and treat you in a way that doesn't pertain at all to the character, it takes you out of it more, so when you're alone in a city where people don't know you, you can kind of pretend even more and get into the head space of where you need to be.

You have to believe that you are the character or the thing or whatever the hell you're playing.

I don't believe actors who say they don't bleed into their characters. It's absolutely impossible not to.

I tend to stay in character between scenes... to be rather serious on set, but here's why, and I think people will find it surprising. I'm one of the worst 'corpses' on a movie set, which means you can't keep a straight face. You start to get the giggles and you can't stop.

There are movies where actors aren't characters but movie stars, being cool beyond belief throughout the whole movie. That is what it is. And we reveal ourselves when we act, very often without noticing. But if I can manage to do a character without showing anything of myself, then that's the ultimate goal for me. No leakage.

As an actor, the biggest compliment you can get, in my book is for someone to believe that you're the character.

Actors will change their face, will change their hair, will change their voice, will disappear into the role. A movie star doesn't disappear.

Acting is not acting. It isn't putting on a face and dancing around in a mask. It's believing that you are that character and playing him as if it were a normal day in the life of that character.

Actors who say they can dive inside a character are either schizophrenic or lying.

Every little thing that people know about you as a person impedes your ability to achieve that kind of terrific suspension of disbelief that happens when an audience goes with an actor and character he's playing.

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.

There are actors who are really fantastically talented at being natural on screen and appearing to be themselves, but I like the challenge of becoming somebody else.

I'm not a media personality, I'm an actress. I want to protect that thing: the suspension of disbelief. The rest of it is just distraction.

I think the biggest compliment an actor can have is if people forget who they're watching and get lost in the character.

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

I think that's how any actor would make their performance convincing: by bringing an element of themselves into the character.

Even during the cuts. He was Rust Cohle during the whole day of shooting. It wasn't until the end of the day that he went back to Matthew 'Just Keep Livin' McConaughey.

I don't call myself a method actor, but the thing is, when you meet Reynolds Woodcock, who is always Reynolds Woodcock, you kind of are Alma, and you kind of become Alma all the time. I think after the first day, Vicky was going, 'Oh gosh.' It was so intense, and I couldn't understand why it was so intense.

I don't want to know about the lives of other actors and I don't want people to know too much about me. If we don't know about the private lives of other actors, that leaves us as clean slates when it comes to playing characters. That's the point, they can create these other characters and I can believe them. I think if you're a good enough actor, that's the way to longevity in the film business. Keep everybody guessing.

I like playing really super-intense, live-in-the-moment characters. It asks me to not phone it in. It's impossible to phone it in. Every American boy has spent his childhood pretending to get shot.

When you're acting, everything is there around you, you just have to believe that it's real. When you're standing there with a slightly grey wig on and you have a baby in your arms screaming in your ear, you can go: "Well, I guess this is what it's like!"

I've dealt with a few method actors, and I don't know if should say this, but I think it's a bunch of nonsense. I think it's film acting and you just have to be on when the camera is rolling.