When I came to WWE back in the day, I'd been working seven-and-a-half years, and I was very frustrated. I started getting some momentum, and my work was very vicious, and it was very believable.
I like playing these characters who are just on the edge of ridiculous but always grounded in reality. I would never want to come across as a cartoon.
I never try and play a bad guy to be bad and to be brutal and to be nasty and vicious, because I think you're going to be very cliche there. You know, you've got to find the truth in that character and what he believes in. It just happens that, you know, he's wrong.
If it's not coming from your heart and if you don't believe it, then more than likely you're not going to be able to bring yourself to performances that justify playing.
The most significant piece of advice my father gave me early on about acting was, don't get caught acting. Really believe in what you're doing and then commit to it. Even if it feels uncomfortable, even if you feel that you're gonna look like an ass. It's all acting, but find the truth in a moment as opposed to just pretending you have and rather than trying to act your way out of it.
Because it's me playing the character, trying to find a way to make it believable and entertaining and interesting.
Sometimes in Brazil, I work harder to make characters different and believable and to overcome the persona I have.
One would expect an actress to stand onscreen mostly as a caricature. If she would say, "I'm selling shoes," you would believe her. She says it and it creates this fiction, non-fiction perception of the film. People believe it because she says it. If she said, "I'm a butcher," people would believe it too, I think.
I don't reflect on sort of the age of the roles that I get. It's usually just what plays into what's believable - 'Am I believable at this age?'
Having children has helped me become a better actor because they remind you to play make believe. It's the ease and naturalness of their beings. They just play and it's completely real for them at the time. As an actor, if we do it well, we make you believe.
When I'm picking songs for an album I always want a song that I can relate to and that I have experienced. There's nothing worse than watching an artist try and sell a song that isn't believable coming from them.
You never want to just be outrageous for outrageous' sake 'cause then it doesn't work, and it's not believable. You want to be as true to whatever character you're playing.
After you read the script, then you actually just have to be in the moment you're in, in order to make it believable. You can't give it away. You can't tip it off. For me, it's always about being truthful in the moment I'm in. Hopefully, being able to reveal what I'm feeling, you have to believe it.
It is a tough job to portray a character and make it believable on screen.
Sincerity is the most important thing in acting. Once you can fake that, you've got it made.
I let the comedy come through the character and just try to make sure that everything is kind of rounded in a truth, in a reality, because that's what I need to make a character work.
As an actor, I function from a place of compassion and empathy - you have to believe 100 percent what your character is doing, because otherwise it will look like it's not real.
It was so easy for me to see that Anthony would be a superb Dr. Lecter because he had been such an amazing good doctor in 'The Elephant Man'. He had been as believable a doctor as you can imagine, and he was good.
What you were singing about was believable and convincing, that's the key to a great singer.
When I play a gay character, I want to be as believable as possible. And when I'm playing a straight character, I also want to be as believable as possible. So the less that people know about my personal life, the more believable I can be as a character.
Our job, as actors, is to just try to be as accurate and as mindful of what the audience is going through and receiving and processing. If it's a situation where the character should look a little bit out of control or do something stupid, it's your job to act into that, in a believable way.
She didn't need to go to acting school to learn that the essence of acting is to act like you're not acting.
With singing, the name of the game is to make yourself believable. When somebody hears you sing a song, and they say, 'Oh, that must have happened to him,' that's when you know you're transmitting. It's like being a good actor. You make people feel things, emotions and what not.
Acting is everything to me and it's at the core of every decision. Whatever importance costumes, details, lights, camera, dialogue and everything else have, if the acting is bad, cheap, or overdone everything else is just gone.
My job is to try and present the most fully-rounded character that I can, and bring a performance that people believe in.
