Actor Psychology Quotes

The funny thing is that I feel close to all my characters. Deep, deep inside them all.

But I'm guessing every actor is insecure.

I'm fascinated with actors, and I've never quite understood the process.

I like to be other people, not me. And when you're on the red carpet, it's like, 'Here's Tom Hardy.' I don't want to be me. That's why I play other people.

When I was a younger actor, I was pretty much solely motivated by validation. I just wanted to be told I was good and handsome and a part of the gang. It was pretty simple animal-social stuff. I don't care as much about those things anymore.

George Clooney likes to talk about himself in the third person mostly. He's always enjoyed it. Listen, I don't like to think in those terms, where you just have to completely separate yourself one from the other.

I'm not really a Method actor. I'm always afraid of working with someone who's afraid to [break character] and won't talk to anyone because they're in character.

Being here allows me to make the case that not all aging, narcissistic movie actors whose children could be mistaken for their grandchildren necessarily act with the same motivation.

I think I may have become an actor to hide from myself. You can escape into a character.

There's a fine line between the Method actor and the schizophrenic.

I like approbation. Any actor who tells you they don't is lying.

Some actors need to be rattled and some need to be focused.

Actors usually respond to minor aspects of their own character or things that even feel disparate from themselves.

I get pretty attached to the majority of the characters I play. I can't help myself.

All good actors are unpredictable, and a little crazy in a good way, because they feel more secure playing other people than themselves.

All an actor has is their blind faith that they are who they say they are today, in any scene.

I have played several characters that are crabby and cranky. I don't know if I'm just not a very well-developed human being or if I don't know myself very well, but I tend to find I can take on elements of the characters that I'm playing. When I was playing a character like Becky Freeley in Miss Guided found that I was insanely positive and happy all the time.

You don't really ever think you're that crazy person you're playing.

I think there are parts of myself in every character I play.

Some of the best actors think they're terrible; that's what keeps you connected to a vulnerability that makes it possible for people to empathize with you.

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.

I am always curious to sit down with the actor who's playing the part after the casting process and get to know them, get to understand their life a little bit more.

There starts to be an overlap between you and the character.

I hate when actors call stuff they're in their 'work.'

The best way to tell an actor he's going to be working more and much harder is to appeal to his ego.