Truth: Personas, Needs, and Flaws in The Art of Building Actors and Creating Characters
From the introduction by Nicole KidmanI first met Susan Batson in New York just a week before I made Peacemaker.  We worked together in earnest for two years on Eyes Wide Shut in London and  on every film I've done since, wherever they've taken us. This book you  hold is called Truth, and that title precisely describes the core of the  work Susan Batson and I do together.I can't create unless I have truth--I have to feel it. Susan helps me to  find the truth in myself and use its purity, intimacy, and honesty to make  my work real. She's helped me to nurture and protect truth in myself and in  the characters that I've played. What I've learned from Susan is how to  keep the truth alive no matter what. There's so much more to acting than  just creative success. It runs thicker and deeper than that. It has  to--it's in my blood, it beats through me. I know that it's in Susan's  blood, too. I feel like we've been together my whole life.A great teacher can make anything seem possible. So many of the actors I've  admired and idolized and, in a few lucky instances, been blessed to work  with, were shaped and inspired by teachers who opened them to the  possibilities of their art. Among actors, Lee Strasberg, Sanford Meisner,  and Jeff Corey are just as legendary as their pupils Marilyn Monroe, Robert  Duvall, and Jack Nicholson. I am confident that Susan Batson will go down  in history as one of acting's legendary teachers. I only hope that my work  can contribute to her legend.I'll always be grateful that I found her. And now, through this book,  you've found her, too.