Michael J. Fox Quotes

You obviously don't have to be a murderer to play a murderer or you don't have to be a dictator to play a dictator. So, you're an actor. You come up with whatever you come up with to play that part.

I love trying to play the not-confident guy, the guy against my normal character, because that's when real acting comes into play.

I'm a method actress in my songs, which is why it's hard to sing them.

I was raised in New York City and raised in the New York City theater world. My father was a theater director and an acting teacher, and it was not uncommon for me to have long discussions about the method and what the various different processes were to finding a character and exploring character and realizing that character.

I'm a geeky actor, in the way that I like the craft of acting. I trained as a stage actor and was given a lot of technical tools to play with. I like the craft of acting. It sounds geeky when I say it, but it's true.

I've been in front of the camera a million times as a musician, and even directed a few music videos. So, I know a lot about spacing, focus, blocking, etcetera. So, acting isn't totally new for me. Still, I find it fascinating, because you actually get to be another person.

The first thing, the main thing, about how I work is I need to understand the character.

I don't see any difference in the craft of acting, in film or television. It's absolutely the same. It's different storytelling, playing a character over multiple hours, as opposed to two.

There is never a personal-life connection between my characters and myself. I'm a professional and I can access what I need to access, so there's no bleed-over. I didn't need to believe in aliens to play Mulder. As for my personal life, everything is fantastic right now.

What I do is to collaborate with each actor and work one-on-one to create a character. And that is a matter of huge complexity and is a combination of a great deal of discussion and a lot of practical work. It involves a lot of consideration for the real people out there, and all kinds of sources of real people. The result is the character. But I'm not supposed to talk about what it is we do, because it's nobody's business.

I always try doing a different character for every film so it's not just changing one.

You spend your life training to be an actor, observing people's characteristics so that you can design characters around what you've seen.

I think I had the good fortune to watch Sly the Artist [Sylvester Stallone]; to watch him in all arenas. As an actor, not many people get to see him turn that character on, they don't understand that he's playing a role.

I think in every character there are aspects of yourself that you bring to it. But then it would be really boring to just play yourself.

I try to put myself into whatever character I play.

Working on camera is a different ballgame in the sense that it's far more intimate work, but the basics and the foundations of being able to create something that isn't necessarily your own instincts - is a character that you have inside your head - whether you're talking about television or film or theater, that still has to be the grounding work.

I feel like with every character, you try to put yourself in that person's position and just completely use your imagination. That's what I do, at least. Everything is just pretend.

What attracted me to acting, from the start, was playing different characters. I'm not a massive fan of just playing myself on screen.

There's lots of incredible roles out there that I'd love to tackle, but there's a select group of actors I find myself gravitating towards, like Philip Seymour Hoffman or Sean Penn or Daniel Day-Lewis - real transformational actors.

I love acting and really taking on another person, another life.

Some actors get by with behaving, not acting. You've got to sell the effect. I act more in the 'Nightmare' movies because it's not like me. I'm acting, not reacting.

Sometimes I think of movie acting as advanced pretend.

I had to focus and create a character in Bagger Vance, not just do my 'Will Smith' thing and get paid.

Every actor has their own process. For me, I really need to stay in the pocket. So, if I'm on set and I'm in character, I'm not thinking like a producer. If I'm on set and I'm not in character, wardrobe and make-up, and I'm just coming on set for the moments that I'm not shooting, then I'm able to be the producer.

Yeah, I think the common denominator - and this is probably going to sound like Acting 101 - but the common denominator is belief in the character in the moment.