Jeremy Irons Quotes

I think everybody should act! I would encourage everybody to do one thing, join a theater class or something. It's so good to take a character that you think is wildly different from who you are, and to try to relate to that person and become that person is very helpful. It's hard to articulate what you learn, but you can feel the effect of these characters that you play and take with you.

I love my job, I love being an actor and stepping into the shoes of different characters and exploring their lives. It's enriched my life extremely. I've learned more about myself and the ways of life through being an actor.

After I play every character, I always walk away and feel a little different. I've experienced something that's not my life, but I've made it my life.

I've done teaching and things like that because if you're acting, you're becoming other human beings, and you need to have time to find who you are as well.

What I love about being an actress is being able to really look into myself and understand another human being.

Sometimes you walk away from playing somebody and you think, "Wow that was far as from my own experience as I can possibly be." And sometimes you walk away thinking, "Wow. There are qualities in that character that I didn't realize I had." And those can be both interesting and uncomfortable.

For me, it's a voyage of self-discovery. I'm able to go on a set and to explore situations, personalities, people and characters that are close to me, or maybe not. Through going there and experiencing these different people and their situations, it helps me to get oriented and develop as a human being. So, acting is fundamental to who I am.

I did not think I had what it took to be an actor, because most of the actors that I encountered were people who were very narcissistic and I thought since I lacked narcissism to become an actor because that's what it took. It was more of a social experiment for me to walk in the shoes of other people that I found interesting.

Why wouldn't you write to escape yourself as much as you might write to express yourself? It's far more interesting to write about others.

That's what I love about acting, you get to find little pieces of yourself in every character you play.

I think acting can bring you closer to yourself and help you understand other people.

Studying acting has been personally enriching because it has taught me to take the time to imagine what someone else's life experience might be like. To look deeply at how our pasts and the circumstances of our early childhoods mold us as people.

One of the reasons I took up acting was to learn to be more human, to get in touch with human emotions.

To this day, that's what I love the most: finding and playing characters who are out of my experience.

It's really fun to put yourself into a character - into shoes you wouldn't normally be in.

A really fun part of getting to be an actor is exploring those parts of yourself that you wouldn't otherwise explore.

It's always interesting to play people different from yourself, it would be boring for me to play myself.

The more that we self-analyze ourselves, the nicer we are to people and to ourselves, and the more we understand each other.

I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals.

I've had to play characters who I absolutely disagree with, as far as their politics, as far as their religion, and their stance on certain social issues, I completely disagree with them. But I have to go in and find who they are and get to their core, into their truth, and have absolute faith and believe in that, in order to portray it. So you have to walk in a lot of different shoes, in that you can't help but have your mind open as a result of that.

We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.

It is wisdom to know others. It is enlightenment to know oneself.

Don't become too narrow. Live fully. Meet all kinds of people. You'll learn something from everyone. Follow what you feel in your heart.

He who knows others is clever; He who knows himself has discernment.

I don't think there's a certain part of a character I take with me. There's a certain part of me I leave with each character, though.