"I mean one of the basic rules when you're acting is that you mustn't stand in judgement on a character, you mustn't say Hitler was a bad man because you can't act in that way"
About this Quote
Acting, at its most unsettling, is an exercise in moral suspension. Suzman’s line lands like a provocation because she drags a sacred certainty into a craft conversation: even Hitler can’t be played as a cardboard monster if the goal is truth onstage. The jolt is the point. By choosing the most radioactive example available, she exposes how quickly “judgment” becomes a shortcut that flattens character into verdict, performance into sermon.
Her intent isn’t to rehabilitate evil; it’s to protect the actor’s instrument. “Hitler was a bad man” is historically accurate, but as an acting choice it’s dead on arrival. It creates distance, a smugness that reads as safety: I know better than him. Suzman’s subtext is that credible portrayal requires stepping inside a person’s self-justifications - the private logic, the vanity, the grievance, the banal routines - because that’s what makes power persuasive and harm possible. Evil doesn’t announce itself as evil; it narrates itself as necessity, destiny, or even virtue.
Context matters: Suzman comes out of a British stage tradition that prizes psychological realism and disciplined empathy, and her career has intersected with overtly political material. In that world, “not judging” isn’t neutrality; it’s method. It’s also a warning to audiences: if we only recognize villains when they snarl, we miss how ordinary humans become agents of atrocity. The craft lesson doubles as a cultural one, and that doubling is why the quote keeps its sting.
Her intent isn’t to rehabilitate evil; it’s to protect the actor’s instrument. “Hitler was a bad man” is historically accurate, but as an acting choice it’s dead on arrival. It creates distance, a smugness that reads as safety: I know better than him. Suzman’s subtext is that credible portrayal requires stepping inside a person’s self-justifications - the private logic, the vanity, the grievance, the banal routines - because that’s what makes power persuasive and harm possible. Evil doesn’t announce itself as evil; it narrates itself as necessity, destiny, or even virtue.
Context matters: Suzman comes out of a British stage tradition that prizes psychological realism and disciplined empathy, and her career has intersected with overtly political material. In that world, “not judging” isn’t neutrality; it’s method. It’s also a warning to audiences: if we only recognize villains when they snarl, we miss how ordinary humans become agents of atrocity. The craft lesson doubles as a cultural one, and that doubling is why the quote keeps its sting.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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