It's always very daunting to play someone who actually existed. You have to honor that, and be specific and accurate and try to make people believe that you're that guy, which is really hard.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I think, first of all, every time you want to play somebody who is real is always challenging and always scary, because you are given a responsibility of someone's real life.
I rarely play a real person, because I don't think I'm a good imitator.
Often, it's easier to play someone further away from you because it's clearer who they are. I think if you want to make a performance authentic, there are a certain amount of leaps of faith into the unknown that you have to take. Otherwise, you're not really risking anything.
Even when you are playing someone who is real, you get their mannerisms and you get their little quirks, but, it still has to be something inside of you that connects with the role, or else you will not be any good.
You have to believe that you are the character or the thing or whatever the hell you're playing.
What's nice about playing somebody real is that generally there's more information about them, so a lot of the questions that you'd otherwise have to make up the answers to are already there.
Real-life people are often the hardest to play, people that you recreate who have actually lived, because you have to live up to people's knowledge of those characters.
When you're portraying someone that really existed, there has to be a time as an actress where you leave reality and move into the fantasy world so you can do your job of creating a character.
Sometimes I think it's easier to play someone who's very, very different from yourself. Besides, I wouldn't want to play people who are just like me; that would get awfully boring very fast!
It's such a challenge to play a good guy - it's hard to be believable.
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