Don Cheadle Quotes

As an actor, there are so many different people to hide behind.

I'm always in disguise in one form or another in my plays.

I was Aladdin, and then I was Captain Von Trapp from 'Sound Of Music' when I was 7 or 8, and then King Arthur. I was always the lead. I've always enjoyed being onstage, acting obnoxious, being someone that wasn't me, hiding behind a character.

The best advice my dad ever gave me is that acting is believing. Acting is not acting. It isn't putting on a face and dancing around in a mask. It's believing that you are that character and playing him as if it were a normal day in the life of that character.

Pretending to be other people is my game and that to me is the essence of the whole business of acting.

An actor is someone who pretends to be somebody else. A movie star is somebody who pretends that somebody else is them.

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 love disappearing. That's what acting is. For me it's about putting on a persona, stepping into a pair of shoes. It's my face, but I'm using it as a tool for that spirit, that character.

The point of acting is to pretend you're someone else and sell a story.

As actors, we get to hide. You can change your hair and your accent, and it's not you. You have tricks, these masks.

Characters don't belong to anyone, not even the person who plays them.

With any role, you're extending yourself and acting out things that never happened to you.

As an actor, we spend so much putting the mask on and trying to be someone you're not.

I always wanted to tell stories and act.

What drew me to acting in the first place was disguise.

They have become part of us in that if we get dressed up as them, we don't actually have to have a script. You can just become them. You just become nervy.

I've been acting my whole life. I have this huge imagination! I'm a dancer and my mom's a dance teacher, and I was always performing and entertaining people. I'd go to see live theatre or a movie, and I'd become the main character for a few days afterwards. I loved being somebody new for a temporary amount of time.

The fun part about doing voiceovers and all that stuff is that you're not yourself; you're some other looking thing and sounding thing and whatever else.

I'm not really an impersonator.

I love a mask. It's why I've got a thing about good writing. When you're acting, you're going into someone else's work. You're behind his words; it's not you.

Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.

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

I like projects in which I can really act and not be me all the time.

I do everything in the third person. Performance is about being someone else.

But it's fun to be something, have that, and you don't have to be real. It's like, comedians. They go on and they're doing all these jokes. I would be like that if I were more awake.