Sometimes it's hard to play someone so similar to you, because you can muddy the character. Often, it's easier to play someone further away from you, because it's clearer who they are.
When you are a character actor they trust you will go in and give them a full character and leave.
I look at rap as an opportunity to act. My head is full of different characters - in each song I'm auditioning a character.
I'd love to do a film. I'd love to play a character that I know the beginning, middle and end of.
Oftentimes, in fact I think this is to my fault, I look at usually scripts as a whole. I should probably pay more attention to the character that I'm going to play and what they do.
I am very ambitious and have set goals for myself. I really don't keep a tab on what my contemporaries are doing. I want to push myself as an actress and don't want to get into the rat race. With every film, I want to grow as a person and an actress. The character I play needs to change me in real life.
I do a lot better if I sit around and think about a character for a couple of months.
I didn't have to audition. That's common, but it had never happened to me before. Normally, I hate auditioning. I need to stew and think... let the character develop and grow inside me.
They killed my character off and as God would have it, just when they told me I would never work again, I got cast in a little program called Roots, and as they would say, the rest is history.
I've been forced to deal with my character assassination.
I did a movie where my character was obsessed with Bruce Lee, so I learned everything about Bruce Lee, read everything, watched his movies.
When preparing a role, I work first on the body language and physical aspects of the performance; the psychological dimension comes naturally once I'm in character.
Nobody's really unsympathetic, I think. People do good and bad things. If a character's totally unsympathetic, they're not real and I'm not interested. Even the real monsters have to have a spark of something you can relate to.
All I try to do is as earnestly and as acutely as I can, conceive a character and try to portray this character just honestly. If the humor is within the absurdity and the awfulness of situations, then let it be seen that way.
In terms of the character itself, I can't really say that I find anything really difficult. I enjoy the character so much I don't perceive difficulty in trying to be him. It's just a matter of how do we get there.
I'm a very great non-violent character. I would never resort to violence to change anything.
From slavery to segregation, we remember that America did not always live up to its ideals. In fact, we often fell far short of them. But we also learned that fundamental to our national character is the drive to live out the true meaning of our creed.
I was never really a character actor - I was a leading man who was always cast as a character. I wanted to be Jack Nicholson or Jean Gabin.
I try to explain to people that you get the roles that are right when they're right. If you have a nerd character but you're kind of a cool guy, you're probably not going to get the nerd part. The nerd is going to get the nerd part. You know, someone like me.
Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.
An accent always helps me ground a character. It also helps to remind me what age I'm playing.
I really didn't have any plan for her other than the henchgirl role, who was better at getting laughs out of the other gang members than the Joker was. I gave her the name Harley Quinn because I thought Harley was a fun name for a girl, and a lot of 'Batman' character names have a bit of a pun to them, like E Nygma.
To get a script like 'Death Proof' and to get cast in it just affirmed that I want to do character work; that's where my heart is. Maybe I will get to it again, maybe I won't, but it's what I like to do is play something a little outside of myself. This solidified the desire certainly for me.
I'm always attracted to the vulnerable character more than I am the superhero.
You can say your lines a million different ways and play your character a million different ways and still hit the common, agreed-upon finish line.
Obama is a very good actor. He knows how to play it. And he is very adept at creating this 'Obama' - this character who is there whenever the world needs something.
People are like, 'What's Game of Thrones about?' I'm like, 'It's in the title.' For real, this is a game for the Iron Throne. No matter what character you are, you're sucked into that at some point.
An individual step in character training is to put responsibility on the individual.
I like playing characters that are true to life, and there's no guarantee that any of us are going to be okay, but we intend to be, and we take the time to try to be. I don't think it's any different for a character.
I would have liked to come back in '300'; they did an origins film of '300' just recently, and it would have been fun to come back and see what happened to my character.
I'm a character actor, so I don't take the hit if the movie's bad, the lead does. So, I don't want to be the lead. He takes the hit, I don't.
Only men of character are trusted.
I would quite like to do a different accent or play something so different from myself because Olivia, the character I play in this film, is similar to me.
Quite often my narrator or protagonist may be a man, but I'm not sure he's the more interesting character, or if the more complex character isn't the woman.
Every audition is different, but I get incredibly nervous and insecure and worked up for however long I have to prep - that's when I get to spin. But you're not allowed to spin once you enter the room. Doubt really can't enter the room when you're auditioning - unless it's part of the character.
Among those who are satisfactory in this respect it is desirable to have represented as great a diversity of intellectual tradition, social milieu and personal character as possible.
