Quote

I act according to the requirements of the character, and if I try to play the role, then I play it truthfully. In my daily life, I'm a laid-back, peaceful guy. I'm just doing my job to act.

You have to have sympathy for and an empathy with a character in order to play them.

For me, acting comes straight from the heart. In that sense I don't act at all. I think that to feel the character's pain I have to be myself. Somewhere audiences see that.

I want to have compassion for my characters - I feel like I am the characters when I'm writing them.

When you're playing a character, as an actor or actress, you can't judge them for what they do. You really have to find what is in them that you have compassion for and fall in love with that character, regardless of what they do or how they behave.

When I act, a part of me goes into the character I am playing.

I've always had a compassion for characters in novels - the sense that they are, whatever they might think, living in a world that has a shape they don't know and can't finally alter.

I don't think my approach to acting is all necessarily in service of the character. I think, selfishly, I've put it in service of myself, my perspective on the world and helping my life.

Acted drama requires surrender of one's self, sympathetic absorption in the play as it develops.

You have to have empathy, knowledge and compassion for your characters if you're a writer.