John Hawkes Quotes

I take my time to get into the mindset of the character and say my lines. I really have to be the person that I am playing.

But today I felt different, today I forgot how long it takes to get into the skin of a character and I remembered it, because today I actually got into that skin and it felt so different.

A performer needs to feel the part to be the part!

I can't just say the words, do a lot of one-liners. I love each person I play; I have to be that person. I have to do him true.

You can't judge a character that you're playing, because then you're fighting against doing what the character's doing.

I like to be absorbed in what my character's doing.

None of the characters I played was very close to me as a real person.

I am not taking home any of the characters I play on screen.

I think some actors are very smart and have the tools. They know how to disconnect themselves from the characters, but I think for a lot of them, it's very difficult.

The thing about being an actor is that you're acting. It's not that big of a deal of to play someone different from yourself.

Ultimately, the idea of acting is to understand the people you're playing, and then where they're coming from is not so mystifying. You've got to detox a bit after, though.

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.

I don't really ever think about whether or not I like the characters I'm playing. I'm more into the minutiae of their behaviour or what they're doing in a certain scene.

With films, you completely immerse yourself in a character, get into who they are, live it and then release it.

I can inhabit any character in a way that is difficult to do successfully in a contemporary novel.

I don't have any training as an actor, but I guess I'm an intense pretender. When you read something over and over, it gets into you a little bit. You can't help but begin to feel it, even if you're a healthy person as I think I am.

It gives a different kind of high when, as an actor, I get to submit myself to the character I play.

What I love to do requires portraying different characters, and you have to separate your life from the role.

If you're playing your character and you're running into all these people who know who you are and treat you in a way that doesn't pertain at all to the character, it takes you out of it more, so when you're alone in a city where people don't know you, you can kind of pretend even more and get into the head space of where you need to be.

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

I think actors are attracted to the idea of other identities and concealing themselves behind some other identity.

So the mask was just really easy, I've got to be honest. And it was great actually because it really allowed you to get into the character a little bit more maybe than without it, if that makes sense.

When you are portraying somebody that has a very specific emotional weight, you feel like you're really starting to abandon your own body and go to someplace else.

You have to be completely in the character, and that's so hard to do. That's why, when they call, 'Cut!,' you often feel yourself shift. Unless you're Daniel Day Lewis, who stays in character all the time, there's a switch that happens.

You've got to internalize the character. You've got to learn the words. These are separate things, but they work together.