Character Quotes - Page 477

I like playing characters who are out there on the edge, where they can explode at any moment or fall off the precipice.

I take great responsibility in any character that I play.

No matter what the characters you play, you have to find the differences in them, especially when you are doing a political movie.

As an actor, you wouldn't be able to play a character if you were worried about the reaction to what you're doing.

I'm hungry for a cold and mean character - I'd love it if someone thought I could play gritty. I want to play a baddie, someone really scary.

What I really learned from Tim Burton is that it's important to have your own person in a role because you can't play a character unless there are elements of human behaviour that you yourself understand. I was really struck by how Tim Burton would like to sit and chat about you... or question things which then you had never thought about. It is a good thing to always step back a bit with things like that. But I try my damned hardest to learn something from everything I do.

On the surface, it's really easy to dismiss certain characters, but sometimes you find that the most interesting parts are disappointingly shallow. It's your job as an actress to pull that person apart, and work out why they act the way that they do.

It feels like I'm starting to come into my own in terms of where I want to go artistically, toward more complicated, interesting characters.

I don't use recurring characters. I do get very interested my characters while I'm working with them, and I find the process of fitting them into a story, and allowing them to create the story around themselves, fascinating. But no, I don't imagine they have a life outside of what I make for them.

Growing up, I was a very shy kid but I felt that being on stage or playing another character would somehow open me up. And I think it did.

I kind of cheer the presence of any gay characters at all - I think the more we can saturate television with any gay character or lesbian character or transgender character, I think that's a really great thing. We're kind of getting past the fact that they're the punchline or that they're the novelty.

I've always wanted to play a soldier and I'd never taken on a character where I'm the happy-go-lucky protagonist. I've played a lot of jerks recently.

With any character, the main objective is to bring authenticity to the role.

The crisis is not an opportunity to change the character of Louisiana's political order. We must not use the crisis to turn Louisiana into a red state -- this is a rainbow state.

Suffering breeds character. Character breeds faith. And in the end, faith will not disappoint. Faith, hope, and dreams will prevail... Our time has come. Our time has come. Our time has come.

I tend to prefer the smaller movies because they shoot more efficiently and so you're are able to maintain that momentum of the character a little more easily.

A lot of times the character's experience is not in accordance with the tone of the movie and it's not really my job to account for the tone of the movie. That's the director's job.

I prefer playing characters that are going through turmoil. Most movie characters are just in service to the story.

In 'Zombieland,' it was such a freewheeling plot it almost didn't matter what the characters were doing scene to scene as long as there was a consistent banter.

The movies that are really big, at least in my experience, oftentimes don't have characters that I feel as personally connected to.

I'm kind of shocked any time somebody hires me and even more shocked any time somebody hires me to play a character like Lex Luthor, which I only knew from the public consciousness of him being a bald, brooding villain who is older than me.

I think the most important thing for an actor is reading the script and trying to figure out if you can play that character well. The last thing on my mind is if the director made good movies previously. It's not my job to know if that director's last movie was any good - it's my job to know if I can play the role.

When you take on a role, even if the character is somebody that you are dissimilar to, you have to identify with the role and look for an emotional connection even if there is not a biographical one.

There are some indications of how the character should behave based on the script, and then as actor makes it his or her own. I got to know one of the writers, Chris Terrio, and we were able to discuss things at length and figure out who this person is to create a real psychology behind what is, perhaps, in a comic book, a less than totally modern psychology. I can only say I've been asked to play an interesting role. A complicated, challenging person.

I don't concern myself with thinking ahead to the finished product. I focus more specifically on what the character is experiencing. Once you relieve yourself of the very arbitrary and always punishing pressure of what an audience is expecting you to do, acting becomes a lot more fun and pure.