Quotes About Character

I have a tendency as an actress in general to ground my characters. Even when doing outlandish characters, that's my instinct.

I think your tendency when you play yourself is to accentuate something about you that you think is the funny thing about you.

My tendency is to be quiet and to stay focused and in character. Not the entire time, but certainly to stay focused while I'm on set.

I'd like to do Nicole Diver in F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'Tender Is the Night,' if that ever gets made.

Money is neither my god nor my devil. It is a form of energy that tends to make us more of who we already are, whether it's greedy or loving.

Generally, I think most of my writing tends to have some kind of magical element to it. That's the way I can access the emotional life of the character.

Whatever I'm working on, the character I'm playing tends to slowly bleed into my own real life. Not in any kind of creepy, Method actor-y kind of way - it's just an innate kind of merging.

Tennis needs some different personalities and a lot more emotions.

I don't want to be remembered for my tennis accomplishments.

I admire Roger Federer, not only for his tennis but also for his personality.

All the time that I'm acting with an animated character, I'm looking at a tennis ball or sticky tape or an eyeline or a man in a green suit. There's no real environment, just this electric green that's blaring into your brain.

It's that I have a good personality and am a good tennis player.

My parents always taught me not to be a good tennis player or the best in what I'm doing, but to be polite.

I know Judge Roy Moore to be not only be a man of character in spite of the tens of millions of dollars that are flowing into Alabama to suggest otherwise.

It's always tense when you move a character from a book to the screen. Always tense.

If the main character's not in jeopardy - physical, psychological, emotional, whatever - then you don't have any tension, and you don't have a story.

The only way to really portray a character and tell a story well is to be flexible internally. And one of the ways we're blocked as actors is being aware of where our bodies are carrying tension.

I'm a physical actor in that I start with a physical sketch of the character. I find it easier to find inspiration from the outside in. If I find the character's tensions and the way he carries himself or looks, that's going to affect how I talk. So that's how I start to create that person.

As an actor, I always like some tension, some distance, between me and the character I'm playing.

No matter how hard we strive for objectivity, writers are biased toward tension - those moments in which character is forged and revealed.

I've always tried to stray towards characters who are way more faceted than your standard leading man role, and I've been fortunate to play some parts who have this awkward tension to them.

Meditation helps you to learn about character and mind. It relieves you of the tension you have gone through.

Never compromise your principles, even if it leads to difficulties in the short term.

I look at something like 'Short Term 12,' and that character has a lot of pain, and I wouldn't have known how to portray that if I hadn't experienced pain myself.