Alessandro Nivola Quotes

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

I don't know if I've ever played a character who's close to me. There have been some elements of myself in different roles. Sometimes, I show one side of myself and then completely conceal the other.

As you mature and gain a semblance of wisdom and a sense of what life is all about... this is by no means true of everyone, but a lot of actors like to escape themselves. Inhabiting another person's persona is often a good way of escaping yourself.

It is always more fun to play a bad guy than to be yourself as you can create a character unlike your own and be someone you are not for a change.

I like to be other people, not me. And when you're on the red carpet, it's like, 'Here's Tom Hardy.' I don't want to be me. That's why I play other people.

I love being someone I'm not for a period of time. I love every minute of being in someone else's skin.

Modeling gave me an opportunity to be someone I'm not each day.

I like to be able to play a character and act out a lot of things which I can't or don't do in my normal everyday life.

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

It is therapeutic for me to act, to be able to slip into somebody else's skin, and know it's not you, but know that you bring a lot of yourself to it. At times in my life it's provided me with a lot of confusion. It's also provided me with a lot of discovery.

I wake up and play a different person every day. Playing all these different characters and trying to figure out who your true authentic self is at the core of that as you're playing all these different roles, and man, that self-awareness starts to come into effect. And you start to see who you really are.

Most actors I know come from a screwed up background, so it makes sense that if you can walk on to a space and recreate your reality, then that's the place that will become very dear.

I want to continue to play characters that are not like me at all, and transform.

I don't know if I'd say I feel green, but I'm getting to know myself as an actor now in a way that I never did as a kid.

I've done teaching and things like that because if you're acting, you're becoming other human beings, and you need to have time to find who you are as well.

I think the only reason I wanted to do modeling, really, was because I knew I wasn't ready to act; I knew I didn't have enough life experience, and I knew that doing photo shoots was a way of acting. Playing a character each shoot and being able to just emerge yourself in these awkward experiences - it was amazing.

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

That's one of the great things about acting - you get to pretend you're somebody else, which is great if you get bored with yourself.

There's so much more to life than that, though I think that acting is fascinating because you can forget your own sorrow as you act and become somebody else.

What acting offered me was the chance to be many other people.

For a lot of actors, there's a sort of code of honor around playing something other than yourself, which I just don't have. I love feeling like I'm - I won't even say acting out, but performing in some deep seam of my consciousness or my family's consciousness or my past. That's really amusing to me.

Acting is a way to escape who you are for a short period of time. It doesn't happen all the time, but every now and then, the sensation of being 'other' is very profound. You get this moment where you are no longer yourself. You lose consciousness of the crew or the audience... it's a thrilling moment. And even quite spiritual.

Acting was a way of me finding myself, which I think is the case of a lot of actors, regardless of where they come from.

Sometimes I think it's easier to play someone who's very, very different from yourself. Besides, I wouldn't want to play people who are just like me; that would get awfully boring very fast!

Acting is what I do with who I am.