A Quote by Jurnee Smollett-Bell

I try to give each performance my own soul, to bring a truth to my character. Hopefully, when I bring that much truth to a character, it resonates with somebody, and it sparks some kind of emotion in them.
I feel like I express myself, as an actor. Whatever the character is put in front of me, I try to bring truth to it, whichever way it lands. I try to bring as much truth to it and make it as believable as I can. I think that's the job of an actor.
You want to try and bring a character to life in an honest a way as you possibly can. It doesn't matter whether he's a doctor, an actor, a car salesman or a captain of a starship. If you can bring truth and honesty to that character, then your audience will believe you.
For me to bring a character to life, you've got to be able to find your own truth.
No one can know truth except the one who obeys truth. You think you know truth. People memorize the Scriptures by the yard, but that is not a guarantee of knowing the truth. Truth is not a text. Truth is in the text, but it takes the text plus the Holy Spirit to bring truth to a human soul.
When I go into making a movie, personally, I don't try to bring other pieces of movies with me. I think that finding a character, relating to her and making her as real as possible means forgetting all of that stuff and just trying to find the truth, in that particular character's words.
I treat every song like a different character. It is good that people recognise my voice instantly, but as an artiste, I always try and bring some variety with each of them.
I'm not saying that I am all of my characters, but for me to bring a character to life, you've got to be able to find your own truth.
I always try to bring a little bit of my own personality to the character, or some sort of personal connection makes it a little bit more of an organic portrayal and the audience can kind of maybe believe it a little bit more. But I always look for something to kind of connect with and identify with, or bring something of myself to the table.
You can make an interesting character in a small portion of a movie, for a character that doesn't have that much on the page, if you just find the contradictions. That's something that I try to bring to my performances.
When writers don't know what to do with a character, they build up the supporting cast and universe to kind of hide that fact. After a while, you can no longer see the character for the underbrush. When that happens, you need to bring out the weed-whacker to clear some of that away so you can focus on the main character.
I am being ripped off, because I've never lied to the press. Just as much truth I bring to my work, a journalist should bring that much truth to their work.
I need you to do more than survive. As writers, as revolutionaries, tell the truth, your truth in your own way. Do not buy into their system of censorship, imagining that if you drop this character or hide that emotion, you can slide through their blockades. Do not eat your heart out in the hope of pleasing them.
I think people are a mixture of everything. I like desperate characters because they do things that most of us normally wouldn't do. If a character is a scoundrel or a liar you think you know them, but then I can bring some emotion to them and they become much fuller than you ever imagined. So what I try to do is have a story where you don't quite know where it's going, and characters who you don't quite know where they're going.
My approach is literally what is being told in the scene. I try to be as real as possible, and I try to find my own truth in it and figure out how to best serve each character.
My job is to try and present the most fully-rounded character that I can, and bring a performance that people believe in.
The most important thing you can do as an actor is bring as much of yourself to the character to ground the character in some sort of reality, and then you build around it and on top of it.
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