It's not a matter of learning lines. It's a matter of getting into the ideas and the will of the person. It's a matter of, 'What does he want to do? What does he want to achieve?'
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes understanding a character's intentions rather than merely memorizing lines.
Max Von Sydow highlights the importance of delving into the deeper motivations and desires of a character in acting. It's not enough to recite lines; an actor must embody the character's goals and will, which brings authenticity and depth to the performance.
In practice
During a theatre workshop, the director quoted this saying to inspire actors to connect more deeply with their roles.
Film acting, if you don't play the lead, you come, and you do your scenes in a few days, and you act with a couple of colleagues. All the rest of the actors you never see, and you don't even meet many of them. And you don't know what will happen with what you've done. Maybe it will be in the film, maybe it will not.
I don't believe in devils. Indifference and misunderstandings can create evil situations. Most of the time, people who appear to be evil are really victims of evil deeds.
What is important, I think, is to reach as many people as you can and do it as well as you can. Reach them and inspire them or amuse them, or maybe in some odd moments help them to discover something they hadn't thought of before.
The more I had to act like a saint, the more I felt like being a sinner.
Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.
The main thing that I learned from editing is that most people, when they're making a film, they start too early into the story. They will try to set up the characters, they will try to establish things before the plot actually starts.
I'm wallowing in the whole idea of just being a guy out there with a band, with songs. It's a real enjoyment.
There are moments when the body is as numinous as words, days that are the good flesh continuing. Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings, saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.
I write plays not to make money, but to stop myself from going mad. Because it's my way of making the world rational to me.
We all need poetry. The moments in our lives that are characterized by language that has to do with necessity or the market, or just, you know, things that take us away from the big questions that we have, those are the things that I think urge us to think about what a poem can offer.
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