Alan Alda Quotes

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.

You don't want to play a character you can't inhabit or commit to fully.

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

With any character, you have to put part of yourself into it because we are the soul that brings that character to life.

You have to like the characters you play.

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

For a writer, they say write what you know. As a performer, you find it in yourself, in your heart. You relate to the character. You try to live it, try to have it be real for you.

I'm not saying that I am all of my characters, but for me to bring a character to life, you've got to be able to find your own truth.

To play any character, you have to have a total understanding of why they do what they do.

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

When I'm writing a song, I try to be the character.

It's hard to actually take details from your personal life and apply them a scene because, as much as you can identify with a feeling, you just get muddled. As soon as you start bringing your own stuff in, it's like, 'No, that's not right.' You're playing a different person. You can relate, but you have to leave that stuff at the door.

To act, no matter how the character is, you have to love and have compassion for the character you're playing.

You have to believe that you are the character or the thing or whatever the hell you're playing.

I think that you have to find a piece of yourself in every role you play. If you don't believe what you're doing, you cannot expect anyone else to believe it.

It's absolutely true that it's almost impossible to play a character without having any affection for him.

I love to act because I love trying on other people's skin.

You use your emotions to try and find them in the character that you're playing.

For me, it's just acting. It's pretending. The best actors are children, and children don't do research. You never see a child going, 'I'm wondering about my motivation here. How can I do this toy? How can I do this train? I don't feel train.'

I think when you play a role, you always have to be a defense attorney for that character.

You can't judge a character that you're playing, because then you're fighting against doing what the character's doing.

In a weird way, I live vicariously through the characters I play as an actor.

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

You put a lot of yourself into a character, so even though he's not you, in a sense it is you.

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