John Lithgow Quotes

You draw on whatever's relevant to the part you're playing; it makes it more personal.

I believe in method acting. Whenever I'm working on a character, I start behaving like him. I start doing these things which the character would normally do. Maybe that's the way I function as an actor, and I believe in it. And that's how I try and portray a character.

I don't act in the way other actresses act, in terms of building or creating a character. I don't transform myself into the role, I invest myself in the role.

I always tend to see, right after reading the script, the character and how I want to play it. I guess that's sort of most of the work, preparing for the role, but almost the creation of the character seems to go on as I read through the script.

I think you have to draw from any character and bring it to yourself as much as possible.

When you are developing a character you have to bring so much of yourself to the role.

As actors, you play people who are not yourselves!

I always try to make each character my own.

I think I would not be described as a character actor in that I don't take on characteristics which are very alien to me.

I love the simplicity of Kevin Spacey's work. He really does a subtle interpretation of every character, and that's kind of my style of acting when it comes to dramatic roles.

There is a little bit of me infused in every character I play.

I think every actor injects some of his own personality into his parts. There's a great deal of myself in McCoy, a great deal of Bill in Kirk, and a great deal of Leonard in Spock!

Acting is not just impersonating your character.

You can say to actors that you've got to be the character and really get into it, but you have to make it realistic by bringing an element of yourself into it.

For better or worse, I don't necessarily categorize myself as a method actor; I'm not going to make claims that I stayed in character 24/7.

I think that's how any actor would make their performance convincing: by bringing an element of themselves into the character.

It's very important that I'm approaching a character that I've either not played before, or I can give it a different take.

There is no such thing as playing someone else's character. Every actor takes a character and makes it his/her own while enacting it on screen.

To portray a real-life character is the toughest job for an actor because one never knows which direction to flow.

I don't prepare myself for any character unless it is really different.

I think, for every actor, the most challenging part of playing a character, specially a real-life character, is to convince yourself that you are the character.

The actor's job is to put themselves in the shoes of the character they are trying to portray as truthfully as possible.

When you're portraying someone, whether they're real or fictional, you have to find some kind of hook where it feels real to you because if you don't believe it yourself, then no one else is going to believe it.

I never do roles, I play people.

I used to think the actor's job was immersing himself completely in another personality.