Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
What's great about being a character actor is you know that you can survive forever. It's not about the gloss of your eyebrows.
One thing that's great about being a character actor is that a movie doesn't rest on your shoulders. If it bombs, it won't hurt my career.
You have to do something different, or you are just the guy who goes out there and has a great match, but nobody cares. You have to have different layers to your character.
To me, great writing - and when you can really make something wonderful out of it as an actor - is when your character has a sense of self-awareness. It doesn't necessarily have to arc. It doesn't have to grow.
I am super nice, I am great, even in the dressing room. I am also quite shy. But when there are difficult times or when you have to show your character, you can count on me. The players who have known me for a while know this.
Mike Leigh encourages you to choose a person that you know to base your character on. You write a whole list of people that you know and you go through that list in great depth with him. And then he chooses one of those people from your list.
The camera lens or the television camera is still just a proscenium arch. And as a great old character actor once said to me, wherever you're acting, you reach up and take hold of the proscenium arch, and you pull it down around your shoulders.