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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.

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.

You have to find ways to relate to the characters you get to play. Put it in terms and in a context that speaks to you.

In many ways, playing a real person is slightly easier because you have a road map. When you're playing someone fictitious, there's myriad ways in. With a real person, there's boundaries, and that sometimes makes the work easier.

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.

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.

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.

You want to be honest with a character and play it truthfully, and you want to be genuine with your character.

I always tell myself that when you're playing a character, pretend they're on trial and you're giving the best witness of their life. You really need to think about every element of the character and represent them properly, as if they were a real person. You want to give 100 percent of what they're worth and what they deserve as people.

In acting, you have to pull from real-life situations, from people, to help develop a character.