I pray to be of service to the playwright, the audience, the other actors and my character.
Going to Nashville to meet the in-laws was the first time when I'd been in America and not been seen as some sort of eccentric character with a cute accent.
When a child grows up without a father, there is an empty place where someone must stand, providing an example of character and confidence.
Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country - and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.
When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part.
When it comes to films, people often don't differentiate between the message of a bad central character and the message of the film itself. They are two separate things.
With movies, it's 10 or 12 or sometimes even 24 weeks, if it's a massive movie, to live within a character. But with a show that's successful, if you start in the first or second season and go until the end, you're always finding new elements of your character that are being added in because you start to live in them as human beings.
You take a look back at some tough parts of your life, just bad things that have happened: they tend to build your character and make you who you are.
That's what I so admired about Johnny Cash and June Carter. Their music wasn't a big influence on me. It was their character, their individual styles, what they were like as people. They weren't afraid to stick out.
Character is always my driving force. And to tell a good story and to provide an entertaining read.
I certainly don't like to play a bad guy. There are no bad people. It's only shades of grey. Also, I am not a great actor who can transform completely into a totally different character for a movie. I am not a trained actor.
The more I love the character, the harder it is to get it wrong. I have to get to a point that I can speak for them.
Not that I'm in the stage of my career where they're offering me parts in 'The Revenant,' but I try very hard to go through the audition process because I feel like I learn quite a lot about the character and the people I'm going to work with.
Working on 'Nightmare Before Christmas,' I had endless arguments, like the studio saying, 'You can't have a main character that's got no eyeballs!' 'How is anybody going to feel for somebody with just eyesockets?' You know? So, it's those kind of things that really wear you down.
There is nothing so fatal to character as half finished tasks.
The trouble with the jokes is that once they're written, I know how they're supposed to work, and all I can do is not hit them. I'm more comfortable improvising. If I have just two or three ideas and I know how the character feels, what the character wants, everything in between is like trapeze work.
I'm the character actor in Hollywood movies, the girl who has to be annoying so the guy can go to the other girl.
Any character who had dark skin, I got all those parts. I could play a Polynesian, East Indian princess, whatever.
Everyone tries to define this thing called Character. It's not hard. Character is doing what's right when nobody's looking.
When you are developing a character you have to bring so much of yourself to the role.
I think it's interesting to have a cool character not look so cool, you know?
When you've played Buffy - who's such a strong female role model - it's really hard for another female character to compare to her.
The real character of a man is found out by his amusements.
To play an older woman, 'til the look is not affected, it is never a problem for me. To play a matured character, it's different. You get to learn so much. It becomes more serious.
I would certainly choose my jobs depending on the actions of the character. I won't do anything that has to do with child abuse or women's abuse.
If you're doing a large, complicated character with radio controls, it might take a number of people several months to make it and if you're talking about a quick little hand puppet, it could be made in 2 days, so there's enormous range there, and no real easy generalities.
Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking.
I go through a whole process with the actors first, building and creating characters, then I encourage them to sort of live in that character when they're in the screen.
I can't help slightly falling in love with every character I write about. And I quite like writing about people who are vilified.
Describe character using dialogue. Describe character using what the characters see or do or think, but not what they had done or where they had been.
When I did the film Generations, in which the character died, I felt like a guest for the first time. That made me very sad.
But I don't think that it's a form of family that I would be comfortable in. I've found a way to this character and this family, but I still believe that a marriage is between two people and not seven or three.
Creating a character and living truthfully through her is a whole different ball game. It's all part of the same person but it's a much newer medium for me.
As a character actor, you have to understand that it's not about you. You have to remember it's about someone else's life. And your character is just passing through.
I want to play a character that is cold. I think there are sides of me that are like that. I'm a fan of the actor Edward Norton, and if you see his early works, he plays a lot of those roles.
I don't think you can sing about certain things when you're a teen-ager or in your early 20s, because you haven't lived long enough. So I think living gives you character and that comes out in your voice.
