Real, believable and colourful acting

From the mouths of actors.

It's a little lazy using other people's words to convey what I consider mandatory, but hey, if it's already been said...?

Meryl Streep

Acting is not about being someone different. It's finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there.

John Paul Sartre Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.

Johnny Depp With any part you play, there is a certain amount of yourself in it. There has to be, otherwise it's just not acting. It's lying.

Edward Norton I've always thought of acting as more of an exercise in empathy, which is not to be confused with sympathy. You're trying to get inside a certain emotional reality or motivational reality and try to figure out what that's about so you can represent it.

Freddie Highmore As always, with acting, you can be too self-conscious. You shouldn't care about what people are thinking about you at the time because they are not caring about you, they are caring about the character.

Robert De Niro One of the things about acting is it allows you to live other people's lives without having to pay the price.

Frank Capra I made mistakes in drama. I thought drama was when people cried. But drama is when the audience cries.

Paul Newman To be an actor you have to be a child.

James Cordon The difference between doing something and not doing something is doing something. So just do it. Oh, and try not to take yourself too seriously, it's just not cool.

As a life coach for actors I have noticed that a vital starting point in being as powerful an actor as possible is an understanding of yourself as a human being and what makes you tick. An exploration of your own personality, motivations, experiences and influences followed by an examination of and association with those of the character.

Once this idea is established and adopted, the process becomes smoother, allowing you to ease out of your own way and into the life of the character.