Paul Bettany Quotes

I think acting is a fun thing because you get to have so many lifetimes in one lifetime, being all these different people.

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

That's why I enjoy acting: getting in the mind of someone else.

Sometimes I think of movie acting as advanced pretend.

With any role, you're extending yourself and acting out things that never happened to you.

I find it easier to play someone who is so far from me because you create someone - you build this person based on the story and the script, with the director.

That's what acting is. You're pretending to be someone else.

My approach as an actor has always been the same, in that the greatest gift that you're ever going to have is your imagination because you're not going to have all life experiences. So you draw on things that are sort of close to it but you spend your time expanding on it or drawing something specific on whatever your situation is.

Really I just want to get on with my job, which is to pretend to be lots of different people. Simple as that.

In acting, you have to pull from real-life situations, from people, to help develop a character.

As much as I know people love the method and what you can draw out of yourself, a lot of acting is very imaginative.

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.

You're always trying to find common ground with whatever you do, but you want to not be thinking about yourself when you're performing a play. The job is getting yourself out of the way and letting the character go about the scenes.

I've been doing this since I was 10 years old, inhabiting different people and playing different roles.

I just love to act. I like to get away, totally play a different character, someone you can get really involved in knowing. I've gotten really involved in some characters and written down little summaries of where they live and what their families are like.

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.

Part of the fun of acting is the research, finding out about other people.

Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.

It's your job as an actor to fill out the blanks. I love doing that. To fill in the bones.

Everything, I think, about acting is based on imagination.

Don't think for a moment that I'm really like any of the characters I've played. I'm not. That's why it's called 'acting'.

If I were to play somebody who ran a fish and chip shop, I would not work in a fish and chip shop for three months. Staring at chips is not going to help me in my performance.

I love the process of discovering a new world - that's why I'm passionate about acting. It's just discovering life, feelings, ideas and thought.

My acting career began on the streets of New York. When I was a cop, I played many impressive roles, from derelict to a doctor, and my life often depended on my performance.

As actors, you play people who are not yourselves!