Jonathan Rauch Quotes

I've always been an actor. That's my job — I can be anything you want me to be.

I find it very hard to play a part, then take it off like a cheap suit and become Mr Normal - Mr. Nice Guy.

Actors are the only honest hypocrites.

I wanted to be an actor. Maybe a comic actor, but an actor. That's what got me into acting was putting on an act, because in life, I wasn't funny and I felt on stage or in the movies, I could do whatever I wanted to. I was free.

I've never thought of myself as an actor, so somebody recognizing me for that would be a real shock.

Everybody is an actor in one way or another. We are all performing certain things.

Who I am on stage is very, very different to who I am in real life.

We're actors. We're the opposite of people.

Man is a make-believe animal: he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part.

It's all performing; that's what we do in life. We talk, we look, and we hear, and we listen. Your life is a performance.

We are not what we seem. We are more than what we seem. The actor knows that. And because the actor knows that hidden inside himself there's a wizard and a king, he also knows that when he's playing himself in his daily life, he's playing a part, he's performing, just as he's performing when he plays a part on stage.

Onstage, I am a devil. But I'm hardly a social reject.

Acting and performing is part of who I am.

I became an actor because it was the only thing I could do. I didn't have any friends, I didn't fit in. But when I started acting everything in my life shifted and I felt happy.

I come from an era, in my world, where you just had to define yourself as who you are and what you do. I happen to be an actor. I happen to be someone that loves to act, that also likes music, that also likes to speak, and that also has an opinion.

I do some acting. And there's a difference between "I do some acting" and "I'm an actor."

Acting became my best friend. When I auditioned to get into college, the teacher said you belong here, Mr. Klugman, and to hear that word belong - I never belonged anywhere before - and suddenly I belonged in acting and it was so comfortable and I loved it.

A ham is simply any actor who has not been successful in repressing his natural instincts.

I'm totally at home on the stage. That's where I live. That's where I was born. That's where I'm safe.

Being an actor is really odd. So, don't take that as your reality - take your family, take your friends, take your relationships - that's your reality. And hang on to them.

When I'm on stage, I'm not me playing me. I'm somebody else doing me. I could never go on stage and be like, "Hey, I'm Mike Tyson. My mother and father was in the sex industry." That's the politically correct way to say it, but I would really say, "My mother and father were pimps and whores. This is my life." I could never do that as Mike Tyson. Because I'd feel sorry for myself. But if I could be objective about it and be somebody else, portraying Mike Tyson, saying this story, then it's easy sailing.

I do love being onstage. And I've always loved playing a character and being watched doing that.

Marlon once said to me about being an actor: Can you imagine going to work every day and pretending to be someone else?

A theater is such a revealing form of art, such a transparent and good actors, they're such powerful individuals. I always kind of dreamt that one day I will open my mouth on stage.