Kirsten Dunst Quotes

I want things to be characters and not me. Why would I want to play me?

There's no question that you can explore aspects of yourself through roles that you play, and you get a chance to investigate yourself; that's healthy, and it's therapeutic in a way. But if you're indulging yourself, exploration at the cost of the story or the project, that's not good.

I think a lot of my work has been a weird attempt to liberate myself, but it's not altogether successful.

I think the beautiful thing about acting is you don't really know who you are. You're able to be whatever you want any day during the week. So I really couldn't see myself being anything else.

I like projects in which I can really act and not be me all the time.

The interesting thing about acting is using all your own stuff and having some kind of personal catharsis while you're working.

I'd had an early stint in acting school, and there was something satisfying about becoming a character, about being inside another mind that you had to create out of yourself. As I moved toward a life in writing, I found many of the things I'd learned in acting school still applied.

Pretend you're a southern sheriff. Or Mae West. Or Donald Duck. Buy a western hat and walk around the house like a cowboy. The point of all this, of course, is to draw yourself out of your accustomed groove.

I realized early on that if I became an actor, I could play a writer and a sculptor and a painter and be all the things you just don't have time to be in your lifetime. I could get to learn about all of them.

It's fun to explore behavior that you can't explore in your own life, so you fool around with it in acting.

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

I love acting because it's a bit of an escape. It gives you the ability to reinvent yourself. They say that acting is the shy man's revenge.

I just do what feels right. I think the great thing about getting to do what I do is that you can try out being a different person without having to screw up your life to do it.

One of the most important reasons for living is to do something - live outside of yourself and put together an idea, an idea that you want to explore and then complete... Awaken your creative sensitivities!

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

I think of childhood as an explosion of creativity. For most people, growing up and earning a living means leaving all that behind. But an artist never leaves that behind. Edwin Mullhouse was my way of exploring the child as artist and, under the guise of childhood, something larger.

When I'm creating a character, I don't see it so much as playing someone else as just playing a specific part of myself under certain circumstances.

I write - though perhaps it sounds pretentious to say so - to make a clearing in the wilderness, to find out what I care about and what exactly to make of it.

As an actor, I don't really think you find yourself. I mean, once you find yourself, I think it becomes boring and you become set in your ways. I think, as an actor I think it's not a bad thing but more of a gift. It's something you're always doing as an actor. You're adjusting constantly.

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

Sometimes acting is really cool because it forces you to exercise certain muscles in your personality that you wouldn't normally be called upon in life.

One of the things I like about acting is that, in a funny way, I come back to myself.

I've been fortunate to play many different types of characters thus far. However, I really enjoy playing roles that are different than who I am personally. You can have these small fantasy worlds where you can be people you would otherwise never get to be: a doctor, a lawyer, a ruthless business woman.

I think the challenge for an actor is always to see which parts of you you can explore and go have fun with.

Acting is always therapeutic.