Quotes About Character

I think that there is no doubt that every experience you have in your life, whether it's playing a character or something else, you bring that to the work.

I think for everyone it's good to have your own personal work on a character and a film before you even start rehearsing, to have an inner life.

It's such a private thing - 'my process' - I can just say that the work that I do is like therapy between me and the character.

I know that some people work differently, but I have to work from the inside out. It doesn't matter how big the character is, there has to be a truthful core.

I was able to work out all sorts of attitudes to style and event and character, all of which affected the way I came to think about my own writing. I believe that all good writers are original.

When you're trying to do character work that's different from what people expect from you, you're sort of in territory that is uncharted, and you don't know how it's playing all the time.

My deep belief is that all of us have the same lifelong work: to learn honesty, courage, and love. To learn, in other words, how to be our best selves.

When I'm playing Big Momma, it's so much work that all I want to do, when I'm finished, is go back home and just relax and study my lines and get ready for the next day.

Well, I think in my own work the subject matter usually deals with characters I know, aspects of myself, friends of mine - that sort of thing.

That's where everything starts, as an actor: you've gotta have great writing and great character development, and then you have really great materials to work from.

In some roles you do that very hard work where, at some point into rehearsals, where all of a sudden it snaps into place. You feel like the soul of this character is now dwelling in you.

I usually work from the inside out but sometimes in comedy it's fun to work from the outside in.

This is a tried and true genre directed by a guy who's famous for character work. This could take a genre picture and lift it and elevate it. That was my thinking.

It's so much easier to write for an actor than for an imaginary character and then try to fit that character to an actor. It doesn't work very often in my experience.

When you work on a character, you form in your mind an image of what he ought to look like. Then you go and find one who resembles him.

Every decision you make - every decision that you make every second - is not a decision about what to do, it is a decision about who you are. Every act is an act of self-definition.

You can always cheat an honest man, but it takes more work.

When I work, I really try to get absorbed in the character. Unless I want to do something playful with the camera, I'm not too worried about where the camera is or positions.

Can a nasty, horrible person still produce good quality, uplifting and inspirational work?

In my early 20s, I didn't even know what the Groundlings was. I had no idea. But I know how to break down a script and work on the character.

Your work speaks for you.

Oh, but a real princess would know that hard work ennobles the soul,' Rose objected. 'That would be one of the signs.

I can work inside the boundaries of Erika Murphy, or whoever the character is. It's fun to create somebody that's not you, that doesn't exist.

Generally I wouldn't accept work on projects where I didn't agree with the sensibilities behind the main character.