* To approach another human being with the idea "I know nothing" is accurate.

Richard Boleslavsky, when he was teaching actors, liked them to do exercises where they acted as different animals.

He thought actors assumed that the people in the roles they were playing were more like the actors than they were. An actor would focus on a few characteristics of the character that were different, and leave the actor's own characteristics untouched to take over large parts of the character.

Playing animal, the actors know they didn't know, and knew they had to build the being from the beginning and all the way out.