A Quote by James Norton

For any actor, it's a great privilege to play a character that is very distant from yourself. — © James Norton
For any actor, it's a great privilege to play a character that is very distant from yourself.
Honestly, when you think of any great action hero or any great hero out there or great character actor, you kind of transcend the character. You just don't love the character, you love the guy. In any of the great action stars, you see the guy doing the work.
Sinbad is a great character for any actor to be able to play: impulsive, adventurous, passionate, loyal, and brave - a true hero.
Batman is not a very interesting character. For any actor. There is simply not much to play. I think Michael Keaton did it the best, and I wish good luck to Ben Affleck. But, you know who would have made a great Batman? Alec Baldwin in the '80s.
I didn't really look like a character actor, yet those were the roles I loved to play. If you were a character actor who didn't necessarily look like a character actor, you had to play bad guys.
[on playing Walter] It was wonderful to be able to play a character who had so many colors and who was able to play comedy, to play incredibly vulnerable, which he did a lot of the time, to play the love story, and to play the relationship with the son, which is quite unusual. That's a gift to me, as an actor. It was like everything you could possibly hope for, over five years. So, I was a very lucky actor.
Any actor who judges his character is a fool - for every role you play you've got to absorb that character's motives and justifications.
As an actor it's like, go with whatever excites you as an actor. What are you're going to invest yourself in as a character? What are you going to get into? Have a variety of characters to play.
Whether or not I am a 'character actor' or any other kind of actor, I really don't know. When people call me a 'character actor,' I fail to understand what it means.
That's what's so great, I get to play any character in the world. And I think that's one of the things that makes doing 'Comedy Bang Bang' or other improv podcasts so fun, as well as my own, is that you can really explore a character deeply for a long period of time that is nothing like yourself.
Sometimes perception is almost more important than the skill level of an actor. And if you give too much away, you have nothing to take for yourself and put onscreen. If people feel like they know you too well, they won't be able to indentify with the character you're trying to portray. Or they'll feel that you're just playing yourself, and then you just become a personality actor. And that's the death of any actor.
I love villains. You know, I am a character actor, and any chance to get to play a really outrageous villain. I like to play that.
Every director is always directing around the play. If you have an actor who really doesn't get the character well enough, you have to direct the play around that character. You have to make choices with that actor. If you have an actor that really doesn't get the role and has certain visions of the role, sometimes you have to direct around that actor.
Perhaps because my background is theatrical, I have a great affinity with the classics. Hamlet has always been a character of great interest to me and a character I would really love to play. Or a character in a Tennessee Williams play, maybe Tom in 'The Glass Menagerie.'
I think, when people so strongly associate an actor with a character they play - but the main feeling is I feel very happy that I've been able to play somebody that people connect so strongly to. That's overall a very good feeling. There's the sweet and the sour, I guess. It does sting a little bit. Your insecurity as an actor maybe seeps in, but ultimately I think it's a very lovely thing. It doesn't happen that often. It's mostly good, I'm fine with it.
It's nice getting to play a different version of yourself. You sign on for a show and think you're just going to play one character for however many years, so it's nice, for an actor, to have a little bit of fun.
An actor's job is to play any kind of character, no matter how sub-human.
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