Forest Whitaker Quotes

You have to be willing to expose yourself, at least to yourself, to get to some kind of truth about a character.

What we try to do in TSAW, which is Tasha Smith Actors Workshop, is to help the actor get to the core of who they really are and how they really feel. So, we may have them do a dump, where you just basically express everything that you feel that you have not been able to express, whether it's good, bad, or ugly.

To explore different parts of yourself and different emotional lives... not to hide from who you are but to actually explore who you are.

I've been trying to take this journey over the last four years of getting away from playing manipulative and villainous characters and playing characters that are affected by what happens to them as opposed to unaffected.

It's nice to take the gloves off, to really examine your character's desires and goals.

I can't just suddenly become 'Little Peace and Love Jair'... I've got to carry on being the same person.

I look to find the heart and soul of people, of my characters. I look for the truth of them and the truths about life that are presented through them.

One thing that I don't think I do is play characters. Once you start claiming that you can do something that you're not, you're crazy. I think scripts can really surprise you. You go, "Wow, I did not know that that response could come from me. I did not know that I had that in me." And so, the process of making the movie is just finding that and digging a little deeper.

I feel like I'm getting closer and closer to myself with time, not only in terms of my career choices, but the choices I make within one role or performance. I used to compose characters that were farther from me, but I find now that I like to craft a subtle composition, a subtle change in your essence.

You can never be more outside of you, than what's in you

If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both.

So I always think it's important to allow someone to reveal themself. If you notice something about someone that you like, it could really tell you something about who they are during a time of trial. The truth will come out.

It is important to express oneself... provided the feelings are real and are taken from your own experience.

If you're really being honest with yourself when you're acting, part of it is touching the real you. You can only separate yourself so much from the character. Those vulnerable moments do touch me.

What do I really think? What do I believe in, without the horse manure?

Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.

I realized that I had to be honest about where I was, where I was coming from, and what I was trying to do.

Everything I've written has been personal and touched on things that I needed to deal with in my personal life. So I just feel that writing is great therapy, and the best writing comes from truth, and so I mine my life constantly for that.

There is no greater delight than to be conscious of sincerity on self-examination.

The best writing really does come from the deepest, most private part of you.

Be as you wish to seem.

The thing is, about a character, it's not about being right, it's about the truth. The truth comes from within, so you have to search as an artist for the truth.

Whatever you perceive, you always make a story with yourself as the main character, and that dictates your life. Then when you read 'The Four Agreements', you hear another voice beneath the story, the voice that comes from your integrity, your spirit.

I know that some people work differently, but I have to work from the inside out. It doesn't matter how big the character is, there has to be a truthful core.

I stay true because whatever the project is, I'm still looking for inside of that character. It's the thing that connects him to me and to everybody else. So, the search is the same. It's to unveil the truth, and that's how I stay true, because my purpose isn't altered.