A Quote by Jodelle Ferland

I don't exactly set out to only play creepy characters, it's just that a lot of those roles come my way. — © Jodelle Ferland
I don't exactly set out to only play creepy characters, it's just that a lot of those roles come my way.
I think a few of my most visible roles are crazy or peppy girls, but I've played a lot of characters who are soldiers, or fighters, or meditative characters, and a lot of this stuff hasn't come out.
It's hard because I seek out strong female roles. I turn down a lot of stuff, not because it's not good, but because I don't want to play certain types of characters. I don't like to just play the pretty girl.
I would love to do some characters that have greater vulnerability. I don't know why. I know I can play these roles, but they're certainly not the only roles I can play.
The roles that men and women play are no longer the standard traditional roles of way back when but are those of two very individual people living their lives. I think it's been a hard transition in society - just take a look at the divorce rate - to figure out what that means now. How do you resolve that?
For a long time, way back in the ’30s and ’40s, there were fabulous female roles. Bette Davis and all those people had incredible, great roles. After World War II, something happened where it was not only "get out of the factories," but "get out of the movies." That's when women's roles started to really [change].
I never set out in the beginning of my career just to play female roles.
As human beings we have this immediate gateway - you’ve just to articulate exactly the way that you’re exiled, exactly the way that you don’t belong, exactly the way that you can’t love, exactly the way that you can’t move ... and you’re on your way again. You’re on your way home. If you can just say exactly the way that you’re imprisoned - the door swings open.
I find that I relate to most of the characters that I play on a really personal level, just because we're the same age, we're girls, and we're growing. I can find myself in those roles, so it makes it easy to connect to. But all of them are their own person - they're all hard to understand and hard to figure out, just like I am.
I always play outsiders. I think I'm carrying a lot of those characters and I wonder if I play them because those characters need an extra element of thought to bring them to life.
I think it's interesting playing characters who are flawed and make mistakes because we all have - no one's just one thing - no one is just bad or just good - so I like finding flawed characters and playing with their redeeming qualities, whether you play it outwardly or not. I think that one of the reasons I'm an actor is that I love people and I love finding out who they are and why they do the things they do, so it is fun to play those kinds of characters.
The film I do doesn't have to be a film that only my kids can watch. My kids will watch films, but I will decide what they watch and not. My aim is to play different characters and not be stuck in a mould. Just because you are a mom and a wife doesn't meant you have to play those roles, even in films.
We are trying to push the envelope with a lot of characters in 'Brothers.' We are going out of the way and being honest to our roles.
Every actor, I don't care what they say, their roles are a lot more interesting than we are, and at the end of the day, it's still entertainment or fantasy. I think we can learn a lot from the characters we play and I find that the characters are even more noble than myself.
Because I sidestepped all the stereotypical roles, in a way I've made a career out of not being Asian - a lot of my roles weren't written as Asian - so there's an impulse in me that wants to take a U-turn and play a very grounded, real Asian character, maybe an immigrant.
I think at some level, it's just alchemy that we, as writers, can't explain when we write the characters. I don't set out to create the characters - they're not, to me, collections of quirks that I can put together. I discover the characters, instead. I usually go through a standard set of interview questions with the character in the beginning and ask the vital stuff: What's important to you? What do you love? Hate? Fear? .. and then I know where to start. But the characters just grow on their own, at a certain point. And start surprising me.
Sometimes, the smaller roles in movies can be the most interesting. If you only take the stance that you'll only play central characters in movies, you'll find yourself not being able to indulge in that morally grey terrain that makes support characters so rich and interesting.
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