If you die you're completely happy and your soul somewhere lives on.
I love the creating part of taking on a character. It is fun to be another person and create what it would be like to be that person.
Acting is very much like a child making believe. I'm not one to become a character, but I fall in love with the character. It's like having faith; you're going to be that person for a while.
I learned a lot about self-reinvention. How you can be born Milton Sternberg in the Bronx and then become Monroe Stahr in Hollywood.
We all portray a lot of characters, and once we get into a shot, we have to come out of our skin and be a completely different person.
The idea of transformation - playing something I'm not - is the bit I enjoy most about acting.
So far, the thing I seem to have been rewarded for in film is leaving myself behind and transforming myself into other people.
When people think of performing they usually think of show-offs, but I think of it more that you disappear into somebody else.
I want to disappear in a role.
I love playing characters who are opposite of who I am.
Well, I always try to look at my characters as being better than I am. That's one of the reasons I guess I became an actor - because you get to create a persona that's bigger or better or more interesting than your own.
Doing an accent removes you from yourself and reminds you, every instant, that you're playing a part.
I like this other world, this forgetting of myself. The actor works in order to escape, not to find himself. You become an actor by leaving yourself, and then you have to keep acting. How tragic!
If you're playing somebody who is not you, then you can imagine that you are that person. You can feel like he feels, move like he moves, look like he looks - in your own mind.
I love being someone I'm not for a period of time. I love every minute of being in someone else's skin.
The thing about being an actor is that you turn into other people. You have to hide yourself a bit in order to let that other person come out.
