Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm open to doing any kind of role and any kind of genre as long as it's interesting and as long as I feel it could be a great character to play. I never take into my own personal opinions or my own public image into account when I chose movie roles.
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.
With all of the characters I've played, I feel like I've tried to communicate through my eyes and face, as much or more than with words. That's something that I like to watch in films, and something that I like to bring to the characters that I play.
I believe in plot, in development of character, in the effect of the passage of time, in a good story - better than something you might find in the newspaper. And I believe a novel should be as complicated and involved as you're capable of making it.
The excitement for me lies not so much in interviewing the hard-to-get famous person, but the person whom you are about to discover. You know, like maybe the character actors who are just coming into their own and you're realizing how great they are.
When I think of character actors, I think of Spencer Tracy; I think of Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall. When I was a young lad watching films, my eyes were on them - watching 'On the Waterfront,' my eyes are on Rod Steiger and Karl Malden, not on Brando.
What I like doing is being a different person. Every character is kind of different. So being able to be that person and then when you leave you're yourself again. So it's kind of weird to be like two different people, and I think that's kind of fun.
My connection to music is so strong. I cling to it. I vibe out to it. I release stress to it. Music is really always close to me. It's really present in my work in terms of how I relate to characters is through rhythm and sound, even in their speech.
You have a valid complaint, and I do recognize it ... but you are reading into things a little bit. Just the same, I will do my best to make horrible things happen to a bunch of white people before something else so graphic hits a minority character.
A person of definite character and purpose who comprehends our way of thought is sure to exert power over us. He cannot altogether be resisted; because, if he understands us, he can make us understand him, through the word, the look, or other symbol.
I really liked it [The Andromeda Strain], and I don't know that it ever had the effect they were hoping for. I don't know if they got the audience we were hoping for. But I thought it was very fun, and I loved the character [Jack Nash] I was playing.
Acting is acting, and who you are will still remain to be who you are. You know, that part won't change it. It will change your wallet, you know? It'll change your life. It will open opportunities for you, but it's not going to change your character.
Gayness is built into Batman. I'm not using gay in the pejorative sense, but Batman is very, very gay. There's just no denying it. Obviously as a fictional character he's intended to be heterosexual, but the basis of the whole concept is utterly gay.
I literally fell into this business. I never came down one day and said, "Atticus' thought of the day...I want to be an actor!" My mom and I would always read story books out loud together and I loved doing character voices and playing with my voice.
It's extreme. The character comes back from the dead, and, at first he doesn't know where he is, how he got there.... How does that tie in with the physicality? I just didn't think he should be too healthy-looking, so I lost some weight for the role.
I have too much respect for the characters I play to make them anything but as real as they can possibly be. I have a great deal of respect for all of them, otherwise I wouldn't do them. And I don't want to screw them by not portraying them honestly.
Sometimes the characters develop almost without your knowing it. You find them doing things you hadn't planned on, and then I have to go back to page 42 and fix things. I'm not recommending it as a way to write. It's very sloppy, but it works for me.
Picking one of your favorite creation or character is like picking the best one of your children! I'm not sure it really works. My very favorite characters tend to be ones I can go back to and look at, and have no idea how they popped out of my head.
There is a shortage of hard R. It was the story and the character. He's never played a character like this and so that was the thing that really won him over. The story itself, on the surface - Patrick and I love actors almost in a geeky kind of way.
In my acting, I have to identify with something in the character. The big tough boy on the side of right - that's me. Simple themes. Same me from the nuances. All I do is sell sincerity and I've been selling the hell out of that ever since I started.
I think I enjoy working obviously as a lead, but also you know I feel I'm also a character actor as well, so I enjoy approaching various projects in all sort of capacities. Any film I have been able to do I feel very fortunate to have been a part of.
I always think of the character as being me. But me wearing a 'coat', which may be a different way of speaking, moving or regarding other people. To me, acting is pretending, just like kids playing, only you pretend as if it were really, really real.
That which we call character is a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a familiar or genius, by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart.
It can be a simple sentence that makes one single point and you build for that. You zero in on one moment that gets that character, you go for it, that's it, man, and if you fail the whole thing is down the drain, but if you make it you hit the moon.
Plot, or evolution, is life responding to environment; and not only is this response always in terms of conflict, but the really great struggle, the epic struggle of creation, is the inner fight of the individual whereby the soul builds up character.
For me, there is a stigma attached to playing beautiful parts. They are often empty characters whom the action happens around. I'm more drawn to characters with a complex internal life, who have a burning frustration underneath that keeps them going.
I used to be surprised and a little annoyed when characters would reappear in my mind, itching to be in another story. Now I realize it's part of the deal, that you create these people out of thin air but then, if you do it right, they actually live.
But some characters in books are really real--Jane Austen's are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not giving one thought to the real facts of marriage.
We are fonder of visiting our friends in health than in sickness. We judge less favorably of their characters when any misfortune happens to them; and a lucky hit, either in business or reputation, improves even their personal appearance in our eyes.
In terms of how prudish Americans were in the '40s and '50s, I have absolutely no idea. I do know about the character that I play. And I don't think it's about being prudish. I think it's about trying to balance a sense of control in this man's life.
I just make what I like - warm and human stories, ones about historic characters and events, and about animals. If there is a secret, I guess it's that I never make the pictures too childish, but always try to get in a little satire of adult foibles.
The only thing that makes me put down a book is if the characters are boring, or the situations aren't fraught with the potential for some great change or I don't mind if an author torments his protagonist, but I do expect a decent payoff in the end.
Over and over I feel as if my characters know who they are, and what happens to them, and where they have been and where they will go, and what they are capable of doing, but they need me to write it down for them because their handwriting is so bad.
The image by Barry Blitt of Barack Obama and Michelle in the White House with him dressed as a terrorist, her dressed as an Angela Davis character, a flag burning in the chimney, a portrait of Bin Laden on the wall is an image I'm extremely proud of.
I never think about the next movie. I always think about the situation I'm in now, but you do think about an arc someone can go. I love Johnny Depp, I love "Pirates of the Caribbean", but I never wanted to play the same character over and over again.
Most businesses change in character and quality over the years, sometimes for the better, perhaps more often for the worse. The investor need not watch his companies' performance like a hawk; but he should give it a good, hard look from time to time.
Even if kids don't love gymnastics, if they start at any age with some classes, they can learn so many different things - they can build a lot of character, strength, flexibility, and courage. Hopefully, they can also develop a sense of fearlessness.
We want the spirit of America to be efficient; we want American character to be efficient; we want American character to display itself in what I may, perhaps, be allowed to call spiritual efficiency - clear disinterested thinking and fearless action
I come in as an actor, having read through the script a few times, made a couple of character-choices, thinking I'm going to be working on it during rehearsals. It's very different. It takes a while we're always like dogs sniffing each other's asses.
I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings and strictly honest, who complained of hard luck. A good character, good habits and iron industry are impregnable to the assaults of all ill-luck that fools ever dreamed.
There is always something of the writer in the work but I don't think Melville had to be swallowed by a whale to write a great novel. If I had lived the lives of all the characters of the songs I've written, that would truly be an extraordinary story.
I'm attracted to stories that excite my imagination, stories that, as I'm reading the script, I feel it, I can see it, I can hear the characters. I'm attracted to characters that are real, that tap into something inside me that I haven't explored yet.
I love the Russian absurdists - [Nikolai] Gogol,[Daniil] Kharms, and [Vladimir] Bulgakov. Even within the Russian experimentalists, there's a lineage of traditional narrative, conflict, and character development, which I find vital to my storytelling.
You do research into specific occupations of the character, with specific behaviorisms that their daily life might give them. You do as much research as you want, as you can. Now that you have such open access to the Internet, it's very easy to do so.
I enjoy entering the viewpoint of characters who are as different from myself as I can get - children, elderly women, animals, a sexy death row murderess - and to imagine how these disparate individuals see the world's cruelty and beauty and vastness.
A little more grace, a motive made pure, a few truths tenderly told, a heart softened, a character subdued, a life consecrated, would restore the right action of the mental mechanism, and make manifest the movement of body and soul in accord with God.
Who on earth is going to use 'utilize' in a text message, a whopping seven characters including the always-hard-to-type 'z,' when you can say the exact same thing in three characters? I can't think of a sentence in which 'use' can't replace 'utilize.'
I do like when you find a true personal relationship with any of the characters, you like to make that honest connection. And every once in a while, there's that glimmer where you got that line in where something happens, where you get to really talk.
I feel like you have to pull from some personal experiences [to acting]. At least that's how I work sometimes. It's just easier that way. And I try it as best as I can and kind of dissolve myself and become a character, not me, or just blur the lines.
I make up the characters in my books, but of course my consciousness is filled with every child I've ever known, including my two grandchildren, my own kids (I had four) and especially myself as a child, because that person still lives inside me, too.