Jenna Elfman Quotes

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

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

You try, as an actor, to wear a mask; you're serving a story.

Actors act... Their job is to become this character. And I have, in fact, seen Sam Heughan become Jamie and Caitriona Balfe become Claire right before my eyes. It was an astonishing transformation.

I think I'm sort of method in a sense, and I enjoy, you know, trying to find that reality in fake emotion.

When you're an actor, you do get involved with your characters - your emotional life is tied up with theirs, and so is your physical life.

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.

For a time, I really thought acting was just impersonating. But impersonation is just big brush strokes, really. What makes acting different is empathy.

Creating a character and living truthfully through her is a whole different ball game. It's all part of the same person but it's a much newer medium for me.

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.

I usually can find a way to do a character to make it real and work. But sometimes it's a struggle sustaining that, because there's such a level of personal involvement and personal, physical, and emotional distraughtness.

Sometimes I think of movie acting as advanced pretend.

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

I always enjoy impersonating my characters in the first-person singular.

The best advice my dad ever gave me is that acting is believing. Acting is not acting. It isn't putting on a face and dancing around in a mask. It's believing that you are that character and playing him as if it were a normal day in the life of that character.

That's precisely what we do as actors: try to convince the audience we are somebody else. And if you can do that, you are really doing something.

When I do film, I really take on roles and I take on characters.

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.

In day-to-day life, our brain sends lots of signals. In acting, there are no signals. You have to believe in what you are trying to portray.

As actors, you play people who are not yourselves!

You have to believe that you are the character or the thing or whatever the hell you're playing.

An actor is someone who pretends to be somebody else. A movie star is somebody who pretends that somebody else is them.

I just play him as myself, I don't ease myself into any role really. I stick a beard on and play me.

I'm a method actor.

The right costume determines the character, helps the actor feel who he is, and serves the story.