The personality of the actor is nine-tenths of the performance. This is a terrifying prospect for many actors hoping to completely disappear and hide within a role. With inferior training, there is so much effort, emphasis, and time spent escaping from the immediacy and danger of facing ourselves in the moment. A common sentiment among actors is feeling like “I’m not enough” or “I’m not interesting enough” as just themselves. So we gravitate toward the safety of warm and fuzzy techniques or complicated, confusing methods that allow us to hide or create a tangled web away from ourselves and the high stakes of performing. In a “MovieMaker Magazine” interview with Philip Seymour Hoffman early in his career he was asked, "Of all the roles you’ve played, which one is closest to you as a person?" Hoffman said, "Everything I play is close to me in its own way. But I think, character-wise, the role where I just kind of showed up to work and didn’t do much, is 'Magnolia.' It’s more just kind of me than anything. 'Magnolia' and 'Love Liza,' really. They’re both parts where I didn’t do anything behaviorally or characteristically; I just kind of left myself
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