Acting is always an escape from 'being yourself', as the latter is a pure void of self-relating negativity, is an abyss of nothingness, the disturbing Real, as humans are devoid of any real identity, the latter always a staged fake, a mask, a persona (Latin for 'he who wears a mask'; there is nothing behind the mask, only that which is in front of it; there is no 'hidden person', no 'inner being' behind the mask of socially constructed symbolic identity, but a Void, the void of pure possibility, of freedom as well as horror). We are always wearing masks, changing masks, exchanging masks, acting in accordance with what we perceive to be the demands of that identification, that always fake identity, that mask. We are always 'acting', identifying with some perceived Other, especially in our daily reality, playing a role, be it an imaginary one (ideal ego) or a symbolic one (ego ideal). Even in private, people are still acting out a role, their behaviour a staged semblance, a simulation, conforming to someone else's desire, someone else's fantasy, someone else's belief. So when people say, "just be yourself" they really mean conform to your pre-prescribed identification, your pre-determined, socially conditioned role, act it out AS IF it were real, act it out as real, act it out in reality, act it out as reality.
Telling a stage or screen actor to simply 'be themselves' is always guaranteed to generate anxiety (something Kubrick deliberately did with numerous actors; see the accounts and interviews with actors in Lobrutto's Kubrick biog, for instance: it's always the same approach, with much the same palette of responses from the actors), because how can they 'be themselves' when nobody ever knows who they really are (because we are not 'really' anything; we have no intrinsic, essential, 'divine', eternal identity), and how can they behave as their 'everyday' persona if the character/role they are playing is clearly radically different? How could Jack Nicholson 'be himself' playing Jack Torrance, a murderous, psychotic madman unless Jack Nicholson was a murderous psychotic madman? How could Matthew Modine 'be himself' playing a marine who murders a little Vietnamese girl by shooting her head off at point blank range, commits a war crime, unless Matthew Modine was a murderous war criminal with a penchant for brutally murdering little girls?
No, actors don't ever 'play themselves' (such actors invariably can't act at all, like the 'actor' who can only play a drunk by himself becoming drunk, which isn't acting at all, but over-identifying, like an actor becoming a murderer in order to 'play' a murderer! Psychos. Snuff movies ...; or the total bores and non-entities on 'reality TV' programs, for whom 'being themselves' is simply being dull, passive, and doing nothing of any interest, like a convalescing couch potato, or a zombie slave to Power), but they often reify or 'typecast' themselves into a stereotypical stage or screen role or persona, that is, acting out the very same branded stereotype in every film that they act in, as is the case for countless actors, especially Hollywood ones (and TV soap/sitcom ones). That is, they stick to a rigid screen persona irrespective of what the character they are playing really is; they have no dynamic range.***
And this is one of the reasons Kubrick had endless takes with numerous actors in most of his films: to break them out of their pre-conditioned, rigid, typecasted acting or screen personas, to force them into a state of anxious panic such that they will (hopefully) experiment with or try out a different or new persona and behaviours, inflections, movements, emotions, expressions, becoming more credible and convincing, less robotic, less conformist, less passively repeating dead behaviours, anachronistic habits. Indeed, with some actors, it eventually became infectious and addictive: instead of such actors becoming exhausted, frustrated, fed up with take after take, the reverse was the case, wanting yet more takes. This happened with, for instance, Nicole Kidman in "Eyes Wide Shut" (there are many accounts of this) and with Steven Berkoff in "Barry Lyndon" (see Lobrutto or Baxter).
***Think of typical typecasted, brand-named, one-dimensional Hollywood film stars like, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Robert DeNiro. In most of their early films they tended to play, to adopt, a fixed screen persona, Arnold the monosyllabic, macho-posturing robotic-fascist zombie with an Austrian accent, DeNiro the self-loathing psychopath. Now watch what happens when they are placed into different character roles in different film genres, such as, as they both were, RomComs or straight comedies: the comedy here derives not from their acting ability as comedians, but from their mis-casting, from the ridiculousness of the screen roles that they are desperately trying to 'fit' into, like Arnold playing a baby-sitter or DeNiro trying to act as a charismatic lothario. The result is invariably stupid and pathetic, typecast screen personas 'pretending' to act other screen personas, such as a screen psycho reflexively 'pretending' to be a caring father, etc, because he is unable to act as one. It's insipid, postmodern phoniness, which is why such branded Hollywood screen actors have a very limited range of acting ability.
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