Character Quotes
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If you know what it is before you even start, it's not as interesting. Central to being an actor is pretending, and the adventure of it all. That's why you become a junkie for different kinds of situations. I try to attach myself to people who really inspire me, and directors who are really passionate. That way, I can give myself more fully and trust the impulse behind why the film is being made, and I can be a little more irresponsible in finding out what the character is. I have to worry less about what the character means if I trust the director.
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I want to know exactly how the first few measures are going to go, and the rough shape of a movement or the whole piece and its essential character.
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Whenever feasible, pick your team on character, not skill. You can teach skills; you can't teach character.
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Every character when born is a stereotype.
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So there's much more to life than one's intelligence score. To be a decent human being. To have some character.
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I learned to understand the distance a character can be from yourself and how important rehearsal can be to creating a person that feels like a person that isn't you.
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I'm a character actor. Nobody's ever seemed to think of me as a leading man. I'm 6'6''. I've got a big nose. I'm gangly. I've got crooked teeth. That's certainly not Brad Pitt. I'm still around and alive, so if they need older guys, I guess they're thinking of me.
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All characters come from people I know, but after the initial inspiration, I tend to modify the characters so they fit with the story.
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I... had guys on the set who didn't like me... they weren't interested in the cold character.
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Characters tend to be either for or against the quest. If they assist it, they are idealized as simply gallant or pure; if they obstruct it, they are characterized as simply villainous or cowardly. Hence every typical character...tends to have his moral opposite confronting him, like black and white pieces in a chess game.
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The characters I have the least in common with are the ones I have the greatest success with. The further a role is from my own experience, the more I try to deepen it.
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Character is like my fingerprint; it identifies me from everyone else in the world. It says who I am and where I am headed.
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Mirth is a Proteus, changing its shape and manner with the thousand diversities of individual character, from the most superfluous gayety to the deepest, moat earnest humor.
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I try to do as many of my own stunts as possible. If you keep on taking yourself out of the role you play, you lose the thread of the character.
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I like to use a bit of chaos when I shoot. I think it may be something from the way I shot my first film - I was very scared, of course, and I prepared everything, I wanted to make sure that the characters did the right thing at the right time on the storyboard. But then I realised that in life, there is so much more than what you can predict or write in advance, that when you shoot the story, it's good to leave some gaps where you lose control. I think this combination of chaos and organisation gives a kind of quality.
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I don't think about the stories so much, as the characters themselves. They live on, and they are almost as real as I am.
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Spend more time building your character than trying to build your platform.
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But when you get to know a character so well, you start to have insights that you can't show because you're confined to your script of your hit show.
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Often, when I am playing difficult roles, I have a problem sleeping because I can't leave the character behind.
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I think you get in these games and you really see who your team is and what their character is.
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Reputation is what you have when you come to a new community; character is what you have when you go away.
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I never get the tall, blonde, glamorous roles because I'm not tall, blonde and glamorous. I'm more the wee, disturbing characters because of the way I look or sound.
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For 350 years we have been taught that reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man and writing an exact man. Football's place is to add a patina of character, a deference to the rules and a respect for authority.
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It is no flattery to give a friend a due character; for commendation is as much the duty of a friend as reprehension.
