A Quote by Ken Watanabe

The characters I play are tough, but I love laughing and humor. — © Ken Watanabe
The characters I play are tough, but I love laughing and humor.
When I realised that what I do really well is play women who are tough and vulnerable, it was a moment of clarity. Many female characters either have one trait or the other, but I play both. I don't need to play characters who are like me. I can just do that with my life.
Sometimes I do readings and people can’t stop laughing, but I’m reading about pretty tragic things. I think Soviet humor is a desperate humor, rather typical of very different nations, of Jewish people, Ukrainians, and of course, Russians. It’s despair - just keep laughing, until you are dead.
I tend to play strong characters and people just assume that I would want to play romantic comedies, which I would love to do, but there are other women that do it so great and they maybe couldn't do what I do, play the kind of characters that I play.
Don't play tennis. Do something you love and enjoy because it's a grind and it's a tough, tough, tough life. My position, I'm trapped. I have to do it.
Why have they been telling us women lately that we have no sense of humor -- when we are always laughing? . . . and when we're not laughing, we're smiling.
Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it ... what you wish in your secret heart were not funny, but it is, and you must laugh. Humor is your own unconscious therapy. Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air, and you.
I love my job. It's such a privilege to be able to play such complicated characters. Growing up, I wanted to be a billion different things. I realized in order for that to happen, I don't have to be them all because the characters I want to play require such research and such a transformation to make that work - that's something that I love doing.
Look, I play all these tough guys and thugs and strong, complex characters. In real life, I am a cringing, neurotic Jewish mess. Can't I for once play that on stage?
You have to laugh at yourself. I do a lot of humor about all ethnicities that are at the show - Latinos, Asians, Indians... What I say is, 'We're laughing together. I'm laughing with you, not at you.' Never say, 'Oh, I'm better than you.'
And as much as I love the gritty characters, I like to play all sorts of characters. I'm an actor. I love to create.
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.
Humor keeps us alive. Humor and food. Don't forget food. You can go a week without laughing.
I'd love to play characters that are so similar to me that it would be crossing limits, and then at the same time I would love to play characters that are so different from me that it would be that kind of challenge as well.
I was interested in the mystical element of humor - was humor part of creation? Is God laughing at us, or with us?
I can remember the times when I started including humor in novels that were suspenseful. I was told you can't do that because you can't keep the audience in suspense if they're laughing. My attitude was, if the character has a sense of humor, then that makes the character more real because that's how we deal with the vicissitudes of life, we deal with it through humor.
Take characters that Nicholson or De Niro play: they're not always tough.
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