Tony Leung Chiu-Wai Quotes

I have been blessed with roles that allow me to express something very personal at a specific time in my life. I seek them out; acting is my therapy.

Acting has always been a way for me to express the emotions I had buried. If I hadn't acted, I would have gone insane. In my acting class, I could let out my real tears and everyone thought it was the character. But no, it was me.

I'm not a super emotional person, so that's one reason I love acting - it makes me deal with myself in that kind of way.

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.

It was difficult for me to feel my feelings, so I just buried them. Then I found that acting was a way for me to get them out. But now that I'm a reasonably sane adult, acting is more about my trying to engage other people: Acting is cathartic for the viewer as well.

I still think you shouldn't use acting as therapy.

It's never really fun to have to cry in a scene, or anything like that. I just try to put myself in the characters position, and that helps. It's never really fun, but at the same time, if you're having a really bad day, it's a great way to get out all of your frustration by doing a really angry or sad scene. That's always a good release.

It's fun to play characters in songs. I can just cheat a little bit... be this person for just a small amount of time and just help vent that idea.

I always give my students exercises where they really have to open a vein and bleed all over the paper and that's the way you get the important characters. Sooner or later every writer worth reading writes a story his mother wouldn't read and having to get that stuff out is part of one's growth as a writer.

Acting's not therapy, but it can be therapeutic.

I've learned a lot with every character, everything from being a cop, to a lawyer to a tattoo artist. And underneath that stuff, I've been really able to find myself through the characters. It's served as a cheap form of emotional therapy.

Acting is always therapeutic.

Somehow, it seems that the sadder a song is, the happier I feel. The release of emotions that many would label as 'negative' is actually a liberating process for me.

Acting probably saved my life. It gave me a home and a safe place to let out all of my emotions and have it be okay.

There have been times in my life when I felt compelled to write things down as a matter of therapy, but whatever I kept about those days, I shredded. It was too personal.

In a weird way, that's the beauty of being an actor. You get to live out things that you're afraid of, and you get to say, 'Well, maybe I can get to the end of it and survive it intact and I can be the hero of my own story.' It's kind of a way of exorcising fear.

Therapy? I don't need that. The roles that I choose are my therapy.

Acting's not particularly complicated. But the great thing is you can step into somebody else's shoes without dealing with the consequences. It's very therapeutic in that way.

I've played a lot of bad guys, and I'm pretty good at leaving my work at the office. And I look at acting as having a certain sort of therapeutic nature to it.

I think acting is therapeutic for me.

Acting is therapy. It keeps you in contact with your feelings.

I always had music growing up, but music was also like a journal. It was like my personal diary or personal journal. A lot of the things I couldn't express to an individual, I would express them in my music.

Every role that one does - at least, that's what happens in my case - becomes a sort of therapy.

I became an actor to escape my own personality. Acting is the most therapeutic thing in the world. You see, through acting you come full circle in your personality and, oh, what a grand time you can have along the way being wonderful people through your characters...I think all the courage that I may lack personally I have as an actor.

Playing a character that allows me to play around with some of the feelings I have inside of myself and explore them - and maybe put them to rest a little bit, or at least come to terms with them - feels successful to me. I think it's about believing in what you do.