Matt Riddle Quotes

Usually I like playing other people. I like finding myself through other characters. But when you do cabaret, you are yourself. I think it's the most fun, and I tell you, if somebody had told me that, I would have done it fifteen years earlier than I did.

My biggest challenge was to make sure that the songs I did were who I am.

There is no longer any pressure to play the heroine. So I can have fun and be the actor I want to be. I can look beyond the hairstyles and the clothes and concentrate on the acting.

It's like I'm coming to a realization that I'm not Terence Trent D'Arby. I'm the soul playing a role of this character that was written.

Blake & Murphy and I used to be best friends. They helped me discover who I am. They taught me that Bliss was good, but bad is better. Because of the boys, I was able to really express who I am instead of being the pixie princess I was pretending to be.

When I was in high school, I tried too hard to be cool and to impress people, but playing all these different characters has helped me find myself again.

I felt more comfortable playing other people than being myself, when I was a kid. And then, the tables turned. Through my performances, I've become more comfortable with who I am, and then I just bring more of myself into the people that I play.

Ironically, it was because I was raised as a Muslim in the South, that I realised the value in being true to who you really are. I've just got so many things going on inside. I don't know how to resolve all of them other than being true to who I am.

When I was a model, I started with an opinion, but was encouraged to lose it. It began as play-acting, but then I lost sight of myself a bit: so when I did the audition for 'Popworld' and they asked my opinion, I felt like crying with happiness.

So I always think it's important to allow someone to reveal themself. If you notice something about someone that you like, it could really tell you something about who they are during a time of trial. The truth will come out.

Onstage, you can be anything you want to be. In concert, I might project a different side of myself, but I wouldn't do anything I'd be embarrassed of.

One of the nice things about acting is that it allows you to open up to the other people within you.

So many people go through life, and they never deal with their own issues, no matter what the issues are - ours happen to be gender identity. But, how many people go through life and just waste an entire life 'cause they'd never deal with themselves to be who they are.

My dream is to one day just be me and my guitar. I'm working myself to the core. Who am I, underneath everything else? I'm still on that journey, to find that core.

Through theater and acting school, I found a way to articulate myself.

I am a very honest person, and I can only say there are moments in my life where I really did think I was being me in the sense of my morals and beliefs and the way I acted. But when I look back at certain things that I wore and my hair and make-up, I was like, 'Whoa! That wasn't me!' But I didn't know it back then.

I had everything I'd hoped for, but I wasn't being myself. So I decided to be honest about who I was. It was strange: The people who loved me for being funny suddenly didn't like me for being... me.

I really don't know how to be anyone else, and whenever I try to be anyone else, I fail miserably. Or I disappoint myself. It doesn't build my self-esteem, and it doesn't help me grow me at all.

'Cars 2' is about a character learning to be himself. There's times in our lives where people always say, 'Well, you've gotta act differently. You should always be yourself.' That's the emotional core of the story.

For me, personality acting is not that interesting. I don't want to just be myself.

I love acting because it's empowering. It empowers me.

Like, that was weird in 'Hamlet 2,' because I played myself there, fully myself, but then I realized, 'Oh, I'm not playing myself. I'm some weird version of myself.' So as an actress, you're always playing something, I don't even know who I am, how could I become me? I don't know what that is.

I couldn't be 'Johnny' in front of a camera in acting jobs and behind the camera I like to be 'Michael.' With directing, you can't do it by halves. There's a lot of reflection, and I have found that I, as 'Michael,' thrive on it. It's lovely coming home and feeling that stuff from a day's work as myself.

One of the things I love about acting is that it reveals a certain something about yourself, but it doesn't reveal your own personal story.

If there is any sense of order to the universe, acting is what I am meant to do. I'm not manufactured. I know acting isn't real, that it's temporary. If there is any theme to the roles I play, it is emotional vulnerability and availability.