Peter Riegert Quotes

I think that acting involves doing your job so well that you are able to help the viewer identify with the character.

It's fun to play a character that you can identify with.

Anytime you take on a character... you just have to find the parts of the character that you can understand.

I've always thought of acting as more of an exercise in empathy, which is not to be confused with sympathy. You're trying to get inside a certain emotional reality or motivational reality and try to figure out what that's about so you can represent it.

But today I felt different, today I forgot how long it takes to get into the skin of a character and I remembered it, because today I actually got into that skin and it felt so different.

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've got to love the villain if you have to play him. You've got to find something that you can live with in yourself if you're going to play the villain in a play on stage.

I think it's always easier to play parts that you have something concrete that you can relate to.

I feel like people assume if a character is very different than you, that means it's difficult to get into their head or into their skin.

That's, to me, the ultimate goal - to disappear inside another character and bring them so fully to life that I've convinced other human beings that it's a real person.

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 prefer to do roles that I can relate to.

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

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.

When you take on a role, even if the character is somebody that you are dissimilar to, you have to identify with the role and look for an emotional connection even if there is not a biographical one.

It's challenging to take on something else that is not you and make it very real and have others be able to associate with it. It's wonderful to provoke thought.

In order to inhabit a character, you've got to embrace and empathise with them.

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

There's something magical about theater. You can live the character every single day to the point where you become that person.

You've got to internalize the character. You've got to learn the words. These are separate things, but they work together.

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

Part of the allure of watching characters on-screen is to be able to put yourself in his or her shoes or to be able to relate to what he or she is going through or what he or she is thinking.

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

It would be hard to play a character you don't like - for me anyway - or can't find something in them to like.