Max von Sydow Quotes

Every actor turns everything round to their character.

If I'm doing my job as an actor, the audience knows everything I know about the character.

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

As an actor, what you dream of is being able to portray people that people empathize with and understand and really feel for.

I've never disliked a character I've played. I've always tried to find the humanity and the reasons for what he does.

I always approach any character I do as being right.

As an actor, you have to find reasons why your character made her decisions, and you have to empathise with her.

The most vital thing for an actor to deliver a great performance is to be honest to the role he or she is playing.

When I'm given a role, I'm consumed by a passion to bring to life a character that exists only on paper. I mull over the character for days and internalise his feelings.

For a time, I really thought acting was just impersonating. But impersonation is just big brush strokes, really. What makes acting different is empathy.

Even when you are playing someone who is real, you get their mannerisms and you get their little quirks, but, it still has to be something inside of you that connects with the role, or else you will not be any good.

So much of movie acting is in the lighting. And in loving your characters. I try to know them, and with that intimacy comes love. And now, I love Voldemort.

My only job as an actor is to try and understand the character and, to the best of my ability, bring this character to life.

I think you ultimately have to love who you're playing. You have to have that kind of feeling. You have to have passion for the person.

I usually don't find myself reacting to my characters. I just create them ... And let the audience decide whether they're empathetic or scared or compelled to cheer me on.

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

In the work that I normally do, you have a whole script, a whole arc, that you play. And I do believe a good actor will play every bit of information they're given.

My approach as an actor has always been the same, in that the greatest gift that you're ever going to have is your imagination because you're not going to have all life experiences. So you draw on things that are sort of close to it but you spend your time expanding on it or drawing something specific on whatever your situation is.

I take my time to get into the mindset of the character and say my lines. I really have to be the person that I am playing.

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

An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument.

My school of thought with going into a character is that you have to understand where they come from, and you have to empathize with them.

Part of an actor's job is to find correlations between your own life and the life of the person you are playing.

Movie acting is primarily listening. If you're really engaged, that's all a movie audience wants to see is you processing what's happening in your world.

Honestly, as an actor, all I need to know, the way I kind of look at a scene, is like a puzzle. There are certain puzzle pieces that are bigger than others, and all I need to know is if this is going to fit here to make this part of the puzzle work.