It’s a slight stretch of the imagination but most people are alike in most ways so I’ve never had any trouble identifying with the character that I’m playing.

Nicholson frames acting less as an exotic transformation than as an exercise in recognizing shared human patterns. By calling identification with a role “a slight stretch of the imagination,” he suggests that the actor’s main task is not to invent an alien psyche but to extend ordinary empathy—finding familiar motives (fear, pride, desire, resentment) inside the character. The remark also implies a democratic view of psychology: beneath surface differences, people repeat similar emotional scripts. In performance terms, this supports a naturalistic approach—grounding even extreme characters in common impulses—while subtly challenging the mystique of acting as something only accessible through extraordinary personal experience.