A Quote by Erica Durance

If you think too much about playing an icon, it will immobilize you. You have to treat it like a fresh character. Sure, there are guidelines so that you don't upset people, but you have to find your own way.
You have to treat it like a fresh character. Sure, there are guidelines so that you don't upset people, but you have to find your own way.
I think you should identify with your character, but plenty of people like themselves and hate themselves. You just have to find out what's truthful for the person you're playing. When people talk about that, I think what they're saying is that as an actor, as Peter, you don't want to make a judgment that comes from your worldview about the character. Your judgments should be coming from the place of the character, and within that space, sure, you could love or hate yourself or whatever you think is most appropriate.
Acting is a marvelous profession ... If you can spend enough time playing other people, you don't have to think too much about your own character and motivations.
The way we treat people we think can't help or hurt us - like housekeepers, waiters, and secretaries - tells more about our character than how we treat people we think are important. How we behave when we think no one is looking or when we don't think we will get caught more accurately portrays our character than what we say or do in service of our reputations.
I like the freedom America has. In Japan people tend to think too much about others' opinions and how to be like everybody else but to Americans it seems more important to be who you are and find your own way.
To find one's way anywhere one has to find one's door, just like Alice, you see. You take too much of one thing and you get too big, then you take too much of another and you get too small. You've got to find your own doorway into things.
It's so different going in the studio and singing your own music and you don't really think about making sure that the message of the song or the idea behind the song comes across to people. Because it's in your head, it's in your heart, whatever, but it's... different when you're playing a character and you're singing as the character. There's just a lot more involved in that, I guess.
Not to rag on myself, but when people say, 'What does it feel like to be an icon?' I'm like, 'My dog does not think I'm an icon, my cat does not think I am an icon, my cousin does not think I am an icon.' I have a really lovely group of friends, and I just don't think about it.
Sometimes when you're playing a very intense character, a disturbed character, you find other layers. That's much more interesting to me, rather than just playing 'intense.' I find it too boring.
I just tell jokes, and I think a lot of people take it too seriously. It's not that I don't have things that I'm angry about in the world, and I think most decent human beings are upset about things, and even upset about things in their own country, but I'm not a particularly unhappy fellow.
Some things I found out in the National Convention I wasn't too glad I did find out. But we will work hard, and it was important to actually really bring this out to the open, the things I will say some people knew about and some people didn't; this stuff that has been kept under the cover for so many years. Actually, the world and America is upset and the only way to bring about a change is to upset it more.
For any character, male or female, I think it's important to have... it's cliche to say a flawed character, but to really think about the good and the bad and make sure that both are present, and it doesn't just become a glossed over icon of perfection.
It is hard to find someone who will give your children a feeling of security while it lasts and not wound them too much when it isfinished, who will treat those children as if they were her own, but knows--and never forgets--that they are yours.
I think that if you get too close to the character, if you do too much historical research, you may find yourself defending your view of a character against the author's view, and I think that's terribly dangerous.
If you're playing your character and you're running into all these people who know who you are and treat you in a way that doesn't pertain at all to the character, it takes you out of it more, so when you're alone in a city where people don't know you, you can kind of pretend even more and get into the head space of where you need to be.
There's this pet phrase about writing that is bandied around particularly in workshops about "finding your own voice as a poet", which I suppose means that you come out from under the direct influence of other poets and have perhaps found a way to combine those influences so that it appears to be your own voice. But I think you could also put it a different way. You, quote, find your voice, unquote, when you are able to invent this one character who resembles you, obviously, and probably is more like you than anyone else on earth, but is not the equivalent to you.
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