Paul Scofield Quotes

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

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

I think the biggest compliment an actor can have is if people forget who they're watching and get lost in the character.

I'm an actor. I'm trying to be the character and do what they're doing.

As an actor you become that lighting rod between the person who made the play and the audience.

To be unrecognizable in movies is the biggest compliment that anybody can give you.

That's precisely what we do as actors: try to convince the audience we are somebody else. And if you can do that, you are really doing something.

I hate acting when I see it. I don't want to feel it, I don't want to see it, I want to be taken away with the story - I don't want the actor's ego in front of me. That's what I try to live when I do the work.

As an actor, the biggest compliment you can get, in my book is for someone to believe that you're the character.

Talking to actors is the same as talking to any other artists; it's getting into the moment for them, and making sure they can lose themselves in the performance!

You're creating a different world and the actor's job is to be able to convince the audience to enter into that world, whether it be actually something that you recognize from your own life or not.

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.

There's a lot to be said for getting really comfortable in a character.

'Dogfight' is my favorite thing I've ever worked on. It's such a special piece, and I'm so close to the character of Rose. I loved doing it every night.

When I watch people like Cate Blanchett act, I don't know what is going on in her life, you just get lost in her performance and that's what I hope to do as well.

I sing as an actress. Whatever I'm singing about, I just become the story.

If the actor believes in the moment, the audience believes in it, too.

For years there, I sort of lived the character.

Onstage, there's a separation between character and audience; onscreen, you can go to a deeper place.

For me, portraying a character is not about liking or disliking it; it's about meeting a challenge that's thrown at you.

I play a guy who is 40. And I am a very good actor, because I'm 41.

I started acting when I was 13 years old and I feel like I really admire actors who are these kind of amazing shape-changing people, that they almost can turn themselves into other people.

Acting is a form of deception, and actors can mesmerize themselves almost as easily as an audience.

For an actor, there is no greater loss than the loss of his audience.

I consider it an actor going to work with other actors. It's not a competitive sport, it's not to outact anybody else, sorta thing, you can be a bad actor but you don't outact anybody, you just bring your character as best as you can.