Miriam Margolyes Quotes

Every actor and actress is possessed of the absorbing passion to create something distinctive and unique.

I played a heap of snow in a school play. I was under a sheet, and crawled out when spring came. I often say I'll never reach the same artistic level again.

To play a character is to inhabit the world and the life of that character.

You know how when you read a book and it becomes a movie, and it's different than you pictured? In some ways, acting is a lot like that.

At 3 years old, I was imitating and doing fun little commercials for the family. Then at 5, I knew, 'OK, this is something I really like.' At 8, I was crying in front of the mirror and my mom was like, 'Oh boy, here we go. We know what she's going to do.'

I try to picture my books being acted out.

I need to have an outlet, and so I go and make up characters and act and sing and dance like a crazy monkey clown.

I love actors; I love seeing great performances. I just love that, when I'm seeing a performance, that inside me, I just go, 'Oh my God, how are you doing that? Where is that coming from?' Where you see an actor do something, and I can't even locate it in my own body.

I'd done 'Peter Pan' in a little pre-K class or whatever.

I sort of dropped the ball after 'Bonnie and Clyde.'

I like making people feel things. Acting doesn't seem like lying but like storytelling.

I always had a dramatic flair. I'd like to dress up like a cowboy, play make-believe. But I didn't realize acting was something I had to do until I got to college.

You hand the baton on, and that's why roles like 'Medea' resonate for years and years, as each new actor comes to it.

When I was much younger, I used to practice my Oscar speech in the mirror. I used to beg my parents to be in movies.

From when I can remember, I wanted to be an actress. I am a die hard fan of dancing and would take my dad's clothes and my mom's clothes and dance in front of the mirror. I loved my dad's clothes, as they had a lot of glitter in them.

Once the makeup is on, it is easy to enter the character's frame of mind.

Normally, if you play a part, you have the words, and you invent the personality out of your experience, your knowledge - your life, in a way.

We are not brain surgeons. We are not curing cancer. We are not finding the next cure for Alzheimer's. We are simply and merely entertainment. We take on and wear the masks of characters. That's what we're paid to do.

There are certain roles that you really want to get, but you need to learn to deal with the rejection.

I was big on movies when I was little. I always wanted to be certain actresses and do my thing like that.

I really wanted to do 'Darna.' I invested so much time, so much effort.

I played a bee! It was a Polish fairy tale we performed at school when I was seven or eight. I had wings fixed to me.

I've been very passionate about storytelling ever since I was a kid. I really don't remember a time when I didn't want to be an actor, and ever since I could remember, I had a really extravagant imagination.

I'm always playing characters with intellects profoundly superior to mine. That's great fun, even though it's as much a fantasy for me as for the people watching me.

With old liars who have been acting all their lives there are moments when they enter so completely into their part that they tremble or shed tears in earnest, although at that very moment, or a second later, they are able to whisper to themselves, "You know you are lying, you shameless old sinner! You're acting now, in spite of your 'holy' wrath.