Bertie Carvel Quotes

Every time you get on a stage or in front of a camera, the whole exercise is about imagination. You're constantly depicting something that doesn't exist, and trying to find the reality of it. Once you settle on that premise, everything else is a matter of degrees.

My mother took me to a lot of operas and when I was eight I got the opportunity to be in one and I realized that transformation into these make-believe situations was possible. I decided that was essentially what I wanted to do with my life.

As an actor, our very palette is one of imagination. So it is a walk onto an empty space and then imagine the world beyond it is what we do.

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

The theatre was created to tell people the truth about life and the social situation.

Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.

I look at scripts really for whether they can be moving or penetrate some kind of truth. You are constantly chasing that feeling as an actor when every part of a production comes together.

I think journalists and filmmakers are keen observers. And actors must also be sharp observers as they draw their characters and their stories from what they experience around them. After all, that is what actors, filmmakers, journalists are trained to be: observers. And then they do something with their observations.

People always make that mistake when they talk about theatre - the notion of the 'theatrical' meaning something separate from life. If it doesn't relate to life, it doesn't relate to anything.

The good thing about being an actor, and the gift of being an actor, is that you are beautifully forced to see the world with different eyes.

The drama is a great revealer of life.

People assume actors are born liars, but I'd argue the actor's job is to tell the truth. And I've realised I'm not a good liar.

To me acting originally became an extension of game playing.

I'm trained in the theater, and acting, for me, is about the imaginative life I create for myself, not about basing it on something real. I think that whatever I create becomes the reality for the audience.

For me, that is the craft of acting: literally creating something from nothing.

Let me put it this way. There is more to acting than just acting like somebody. I like to act in such a way that other people get some notion of what it's like to be somebody.

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

Acting requires a great amount of empathy for real lived human experiences.

The fact that I like to make characters doesn't mean that I like to watch my characters being made, my performance.

Acting is the ability to dream on cue.

Of all the things I do, acting is the thing that grabs most, but there's another level on which it strikes me as being a little silly. In the end you're dressing up and deciding to be somebody.

I've been doing this since I was 10 years old, inhabiting different people and playing different roles.

For as long as I can remember, the thing that gave me a sense of wonderment and renewal... has always been the work of other actors.

I was very intense. I think it's a privilege to be an actor.

The reason you want to act is to continue to explore every different part of the human psyche.