Acting Psychology Quotes

When you're a child, and you're growing up, and you're mimicking a certain character, or you're trying to live and breathe a certain character on set for eight years that are also your formative years, you oftentimes take a lot of who you're playing into your real life and kind of become that thing.

I've played my fair share of unpleasant character, and I have to tell you that you sleep better when you're playing fun characters. You think you don't take it home with you, at the end of the filming day, but subconsciously, there's something floating around in the background there.

I bring so much of myself to each character that there's always a worrying point when I think: 'Oh no, I'm really that person.'

It's very strange to become a character: the lines get blurred, and you start to sort of, I don't know, take it home too much?

For me, the acting part - and I have to say it makes me a little worried about my own psychological make-up - is that I just love to hide in other characters. I don't like to get up in front of people and talk as Kathy Baker. But as soon as you say 'action,' I'm lost in that character.

The key to every actor is deep, deep insecurity.

I often talk with other actors about that time when you've just finished a job, because I think you do take on the characteristics of some of the characters you play. Sometimes it can be a great thing and sometimes it's a bit haunting because you're not quite sure how to leave it on set. My dad talks about it as being 'de-personalised.'

Those things that we probably are ashamed of as human beings, certain things that no one would ever talk about - as actors, when we transform into a character, we empathize with those moments.

I sometimes find that playing the bad guy, or villains, or psychopaths tend to be much more psychologically rewarding. And you can really push it, you can push the limits, and get away with it.

Any actor who tells you that they have become the people they play, unless they’re clearly diagnosed as a schizophrenic, is bullshitting you.

I do tend to find when you're playing characters, often - just for the time you're playing them - there are sides of your personality that get stronger because you draw on them more.

Psychology and acting are very closely linked. It's just about studying people and how they work. It can be an incredible discipline and exercise.

I feel like, when I play characters, I create a space in myself that feels like the character and that doesn't go away. Somehow, you carry that with you. You let it go, but a little piece of it remains.

On the very last day of shooting [of The Last King of Scotlang], I remember wanting to get the [Idi Amin] character out of me right away, as much as I could. You literally take a bath to wash him off you. Luckily, I went into another part not so long afterwards, so I was kind of able to push it away a little bit. But speech patterns, and little sounds, particularly colloquial things, like the way you ask questions or might respond, were sticking with me, probably because I'd worked so hard to make it a part of my everyday way of expressing myself.

The only way I know how to do something, as cheesy as it sounds, is to become that character, and it affects me in a not so healthy way.

I don't think I can play a role without falling in love with something about her; even the most despicable people who I have portrayed had some aspect of them which I found beautiful.

I remember when Heath Ledger talked about playing the Joker... I always used to look out of the side of my eye, going, 'Yeah, actors.' But there really is a darkness when you are playing someone psychotic - you have to go there mentally.

I have an occasionally recurring stutter, but not when in character on stage in a play. Odd. James Earl Jones has the same pattern; he stutters in everyday life but not when acting. Preparation requires an actor's concentration to make the words belong to another person, which is its own sort of trance.

I have to believe in the character to perform it.

When I'm playing a bad guy, a lot of it is imagined: things I thought I wanted to do, but I never would do them.

You have to love the guy that you play, even if you play the villain, you've got to love him.

Actors who say they can dive inside a character are either schizophrenic or lying.

We all have aspects of ourselves that we my not be aware of. Actors in particular - they have multiple personality disorder. They get paid a lot of money to exhibit that.

Part of the reason of being an actor is you like playing other people's lives and exploring all the psychologies in that and the emotions.

I always find that I have to be emotionally on my character's side for it to be convincing.