An actor, said Orson Welles, creates a truthful performance by looking into his or her own character and selectively taking things away. “There is a villain in each of us, a murderer in each of us, a fascist in each of us, a saint in each of us, and the actor is the man or woman who can eliminate from himself those things which will interfere with that truth"..Could someone break it down for me ? what does he mean by eliminating from oneself those things that interfere with truth?

We're all capable of being all of those things if we let go of our personal beliefs, stop judging, and don't censor ourselves.

Examples:

Meryl Streep and Michael J. Fox are totally Left winged Liberals but they have played very conservative characters convincingly ie. Margaret Thatcher and Alex Keaton. They didn't go "psssh. I'm not playing someone who's on the opposite end of the politcial spectrum."

Tom Hanks made us believe that he was gay in Philadelphia. He didn't go "I'm straight, yo. I can't play this."

Anthony Hopkins doesn't have a criminal record of killing and eating people, but we believed he did as Hannibal Lecter. He didn't go "I'd never do this in real life."

o ok thanks for breaking that down.As far as and actor's concerned how would one go about learning to let go of personal beliefs ? and be non judgemental ?

Improv is meant to teach you how to not give a shit and to not censor yourself.

Or you can just plain adopt the attitude "f' yeah! Here's my chance to do something that I normally would not or could not do in real life!"