Any actor who judges his character is a fool - for every role you play you've got to absorb that character's motives and justifications.
Interpretation
Actors should fully embody their characters without judgment to deliver authentic performances.
In this quote, Alan Rickman emphasizes the importance of understanding and fully inhabiting the characters an actor portrays. Judging a character limits the depth of performance, as true acting requires empathy and immersion into the character's motives and justifications, allowing for a more genuine portrayal that resonates with the audience.
In practice
In a workshop for aspiring actors, this quote can be shared to encourage them to fully embrace their roles.
Film has to be reflecting the world that we live in, and that's all you want to be a part of. Actors inhabit the same planet as everyone else. It's a weird thing that happens when you're an actor because people hold you up because you somehow embody in parts groups of people or people's hopes or something.
You can act truthfully or you can lie. You can reveal things about yourself or you can hide. Therefore, the audience recognizes something about themselves or they don't -- You hope they don't leave the theatre thinking that was nice...now where's the cab?'
I'm a lot less serious than people think, it's probably because the way my face is put together.
Those of you who are not aware of my brilliant career as a stand up comic, I'm not aware of it either so we might well wonder what we're doing here.
Acting is mostly about listening. If you just focus in on what the other person is saying, acting takes care of itself to quite a large extent.
When I am asked about influences, I always say I bow down to Fred Astaire, because when you look at him dancing you never look at his extremities, do you? You look at his centre. What you never see is the hours of work that went into the routines, you just see the breathtaking spirit and freedom.
If you just love movies enough, you can make a good one.
If you consider film an art form, as some people do, then the Western would be a truly American art form, much as jazz is.
When I'm creating a character, I don't see it so much as playing someone else as just playing a specific part of myself under certain circumstances.
Meet some people who care about poetry the way you do. You'll have that readership. Keep going until you know you're doing work that's worthy. And then see what happens. That's my advice.
All the masterpieces of art contain both light and shadow. A happy life is not one filled with only sunshine, but one which uses both light and shadow to produce beauty.
I didn’t want a completely passive viewer. Art means too much to me. To be able to articulate something visually is really an important thing. I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn’t walk away; he would giggle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.