Kiernan Shipka Quotes

If I wasn't an actor, I never would have known who Debbie Gallagher was. I never would know how her feelings are or how her emotions are, or her family.

As an actor, it's really exciting and challenging to play a character which is much older than your actual age.

When you play a character, you get to see the world through their eyes. Whether it's a fictional world or a real world, you do get to see somebody else's point of view, whether he's a good guy or a bad guy.

Acting isn't necessarily pretending. It's storytelling. It's giving someone your perspective on something.

I've always tried to have a healthy take on the characters I play; they are only characters I play.

You have to have sympathy for and an empathy with a character in order to play them.

It was a big deal to me to play characters and feel things and connect to somebody in a fake world.

You've got to empathize with every character you play.

When you play a character, you commit yourself to their beliefs.

I have played a boxer, a cowboy, a knight, a prince, an elf and a pirate. I am so glad to have done all of that already.

I love the creating part of taking on a character. It is fun to be another person and create what it would be like to be that person.

You've got to be honest with yourself aesthetically about who could you play. You want to artistically be true to that character.

Anytime you take on a character... you just have to find the parts of the character that you can understand.

I really do literally put myself into a character's shoes.

With any role, you're extending yourself and acting out things that never happened to you.

It's funny because I've resisted acting as a career for most of my life. But both my parents told me if I ever want to direct, I should act first because no director should direct until they know what it's like to be in the actor's shoes.

It makes it fun. When an actor plays a character, you want what that character wants. Otherwise it doesn't look authentic. So I really want to defeat Jimmy - I mean Jimmy as the character.

And it was the idea that you can do a play - like a Shakespeare play, or any well-written play, Arthur Miller, whatever - and say things you could never imagine saying, never imagine thinking in your own life.

I've always thought of acting as more of an exercise in empathy, which is not to be confused with sympathy. You're trying to get inside a certain emotional reality or motivational reality and try to figure out what that's about so you can represent it.

I always try to find something I admire about every character I play.

You have license in front of the camera to do things, feel certain emotions that you don't get to in real life. It can be addicting.

When you have a chance to play a character people can relate to, it's rewarding.

I love the feeling I get when I'm on a set; I love reading the scripts, playing the characters, getting to be someone else.

But today I felt different, today I forgot how long it takes to get into the skin of a character and I remembered it, because today I actually got into that skin and it felt so different.

I don't have any training as an actor, but I guess I'm an intense pretender. When you read something over and over, it gets into you a little bit. You can't help but begin to feel it, even if you're a healthy person as I think I am.