We are talking about someone who has lived. It must be honored in

In the words of Kate Mulgrew, an artist of profound presence and discipline, we find a truth that transcends the art of performance and touches the soul of creation itself: “We are talking about someone who has lived. It must be honored in every respect. The fictional can take any kind of channel—according to the actor’s marriage to the character.” These words speak not only to the craft of acting but to the sacred bond between truth and imagination, between life and art. For Mulgrew, the actor’s task is not mere imitation—it is resurrection. The character is not a mask to be worn; it is a soul to be known, honored, and brought forth through love.

The origin of this quote lies in Mulgrew’s long devotion to her craft, shaped by decades upon the stage and screen. Known for her commanding performances—especially as Captain Kathryn Janeway of Star Trek: Voyager—Mulgrew has spent her life breathing reality into fiction. Her insight reveals the depth of her reverence for the human experience, both real and imagined. When she says, “We are talking about someone who has lived,” she reminds us that every character, no matter how fantastical, carries within them the essence of humanity—the same fears, longings, and desires that define us all. To portray such a being requires not vanity, but humility. It is not performance; it is service.

The ancients would have recognized this wisdom, for they too saw art as a vessel for the divine. The Greek dramatists, when they donned the masks of their tragedies, believed they were invoking the spirits of those who had truly lived and suffered. Aeschylus and Sophocles did not write to entertain—they wrote to reveal the soul’s journey through suffering and redemption. To the ancient actor, as to Mulgrew, the stage was a sacred ground, and the marriage between actor and character was a covenant. The performer was not a creator, but a conduit—a bridge between the mortal and the eternal.

When Mulgrew speaks of the “actor’s marriage to the character,” she means a union of truth and imagination, of self and other. It is a surrender, a merging. Just as in love, one cannot hold back and still be whole, so in art, one cannot remain a stranger to the life one portrays. The actor must give themselves utterly, not for fame or applause, but to honor the life being lived through them. Whether that life belongs to a real figure from history or a being born from the writer’s mind, it deserves reverence. For to embody another soul is to recognize the divine spark in all living and imagined forms.

Consider the story of Daniel Day-Lewis, the actor who became Abraham Lincoln in the film that bears the President’s name. He did not “play” Lincoln—he lived as him, spoke as him, even dreamt as him, so that when the cameras rolled, the boundary between history and performance vanished. In that act of total immersion, Day-Lewis fulfilled the principle Mulgrew describes: the fictional took its channel through the actor’s devotion. It was no longer about a performance; it became communion—a joining of spirit across time. And through that union, the world was allowed to meet Lincoln once more, not as a statue, but as a man.

Mulgrew’s words also contain a warning for all who create: art must not be treated lightly. To invent, to act, to write—these are not acts of escape, but of stewardship. The fictional world, though imagined, draws its lifeblood from the real one. The artist who forgets this risks creating hollow echoes instead of living truth. Thus, the wise artist approaches their work as a priest approaches the altar—with reverence, courage, and total attention. Every line, every gesture, every breath must honor the sanctity of the life being portrayed, whether that life belongs to a hero, a villain, or a simple soul lost to time.

And so the lesson is clear: in art, as in life, to create is to honor. Whether you are an actor, a writer, a craftsman, or a lover of any pursuit that seeks to give form to the unseen, you must first recognize the humanity of what you touch. Give yourself to your work as a vow, not a performance. Let the marriage between self and creation be sacred, patient, and complete. For when you give yourself fully to your craft, what you make will cease to be fiction—it will become truth in another form.

Thus let these words guide those who create, and those who live: Honor what has lived. Whether in memory, imagination, or flesh, life deserves reverence. Approach each act of creation as if it were the telling of a soul’s story, for in truth, it always is. And when you give your all—when you live the “marriage” between what is real and what is possible—you do what the ancients called divine: you make the unseen visible, and you breathe eternity into the mortal world.