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.
My sense of myself is that I'm a character actor, and character actors are ready, willing, and able to do anything, to be totally different from themselves. That's my job, to be ready. I'm some kind of first responder.
I love doing roles and movies that are different from each other. That's kind of why I like to be an actor because I get to play different characters and pretend I'm different people going through different situations.
The only thing I have tried to do is be a part of different films and bring out a different side of me as an actor every time I play a character. I would like to be known as a versatile actor.
This is a corny actor thing to say, but the first step is that you can't judge the character that you're playing. If it's built in three-dimensional fashion, you'll just play a character who's going out and seeking the best version of their life that they can find. That gives the character an accessibility that everyone can identify with.
You want to play another kind of character in another genre, and it's been something I've been trying to do if I can in the career so far, and it's something I hope to continue because it's interesting to me and you get to do different things as an actor.
In 'Stree,' I play a character who believes that he knows everything. And I play a cop in 'Drive.' It is a different kind of a role. It is not a uniform-wearing character. The film is interesting, since it is a thriller.
You can say something that can really help and actor and you can say something that can really get in the way of an actor's performance, kind of cut them off from their instincts and really get into their heads. And every actor's different. Every actor requires something different. Being an actor, for me, was the greatest training to be a writer and director.
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.
I would quite like to do a different accent or play something so different from myself because Olivia, the character I play in this film, is similar to me.
I get the privilege to play with Mesut every day. He is a world-class player. He gives me advice in a different way. He jokes around but he always tells me I can do more. He also gives me the confidence to express myself.
That straight man character is a short trip between comedy and drama in a project, so I can play the comedic beat on the same page as a dramatic beat. It gives me a lot of freedom as an actor to play scenes in multiple ways because I don't play the clown, nor do I play someone who is particularly maudlin.
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.
I think of myself as a character actor, compared to a straight actor. I know a character actor in England is pretty much the same as in the States; you're actually hired to put on terrible teeth and stuff like that.
I try to play characters who are different from myself, so I feel like this character is someone who is really different. I actually think that if I did what he did in this movie, I would get a restraining order put against me.
I never saw myself as a character actor or a lead actor; I've only seen myself as just an actor.