Alan Arkin on pretending to be a human being

From his obituary in the NY Times:

In 2011 he published a memoir, “An Improvised Life”; he followed that in 2020 with “Out of My Mind,” a brief history of his search for meaning in the universe and his embrace of Eastern philosophy. 

Toward the end of “An Improvised Life,” Mr. Arkin reflected on his chosen profession. Noting that a lot of actors “are better at pretending to be other people than they are at being themselves,” he wrote, “When things get tense, when I start taking my work a bit too seriously, I remind myself that I’m only pretending to be a human being.”