Top 1200 Character Actors Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

Actors always direct themselves. A good actor shows up onset ready, especially in television, and you've done your homework and you know your character. The director may have some variation on what you're thinking or they may have a different interpretation of the scene. So you come prepared to shoot and you've given yourself notes. In television, it may be the first time you're meeting this director and you've been living in this character's skin for a couple of years. It's always great to have fresh perspective and fresh insight, but no one knows your character better than you do.

Coming from documentaries, my biggest challenge was to understand actors' psychologies. American actors take it all very seriously; British actors don't enter into all this methody way of doing things.

Actors have an unusual perspective on clothing. You've really got to know the impact of what you're wearing on the character you're playing.

It's hard for actors to have to deal with the fact that they pour so much into their character, but the audience might have a negative assessment of them.

If you're writing a bi character, did you look at a lot of bi actors for the role? Did you really go and find people that identified as queer? If you did, then great, and if you didn't find anyone you liked in that pool, well, that's surprising. If you write a character that's trans, the time is now - cast a trans actor.

I think it would be self-indulgent to go, "Oh, I'm going to make this character different by giving him a quirk of some kind." I don't think that serves the story, particularly. But even very similar scenes with a different set of actors, a different set of circumstances, it starts to evolve as a different character.

A lot of American actors I work with are in character all day long. You can't talk to them. It's Method and the whole thing.

I learned that the acting I really like is when the actors did a lot of bringing themselves, and where they're at at the moment, to the character.

I write from this tight third-person viewpoint, where each chapter is seen through the eyes of one individual character. When I'm writing that character, I become that character and identify with that character.

People are very uncomfortable when you call actors artists because there are a lot of actors out there that aren't artists - there are a lot of actors that are hired for very specific reasons that are shallow and have to do with sexual currency and what the industry thinks sells. Real actors are artists, they're expressionists.

Honestly, in retrospect, when I referred to the actors from 'Prince' as non-actors or non-professionals, it was actually a great disservice to them. The fact is that they are all actors and should be viewed that way by the industry. It was our casting process that was non-professional.

I believe that as a writer and a director, you're only providing the skeleton of a character, and you're hiring actors to fill it out.

As you get older, you suffer fools less easily. That's why there's all those cranky character actors. I'm an exception. I'm a sweetheart.

I connect much more with theatre actors than with cinema actors - insofar as you can speak of 'cinema actors' in Mexico, because there isn't a big film industry.

Cable TV has become where the best actors, writers and directors have gone to work because they are allowed to do character-driven stories.

Some actors, and especially the younger actors, they come into the job with a lot of attention on how they behave and everything when they're not working. Sometimes that can be unfortunate because the work call is pretty intense and the preparation for it. If your focus is there, then the actual doing of the job will be fun and enjoyable. But if you're so involved in trying to be interesting and a character and everything when you're not working, it can get in the way and people get goofed up.

A lot of actors are like, 'Why do I do this? My character wouldn't do this? This doesn't make sense.' And in a comedy, you kind of just need to walk into the door.

In this country, you have movie actors and theatre actors and television actors.

You know when you watch old movies, it's always the small parts you remember, the character actors who come in like a breath of fresh air.

Actors have an unusual perspective on clothing. You've really got to know the impact of what you're wearing on the character you're playing

In real life, every person is the leading man or woman. We don't think of ourselves as supporting or character actors.

Actors look for characters. If they read a well-written character, and if they think the director's not an idiot, they're going to sign up and do some acting.

My favorite actors are people who I don't know anything about, and I can project any character onto them.

You can say to actors that you've got to be the character and really get into it, but you have to make it realistic by bringing an element of yourself into it.

I feel passionately that we need more space on TV for sketch shows for character actors to experiment.

I always change my words in everything I do. I make the language fit, because I know the character from the inside out. Often character actors are not in a position to do that, but I do it. I don't change any cue and I never change anybody else's lines, but I make my own words fit my mouth.

There is a strange pecking order among actors. Theatre actors look down on film actors, who look down on TV actors. Thank God for reality shows, or we wouldn't have anybody to look down on.

There are a lot of actors in the world, there's a small number that actually get to work as actors, and there is a tiny group of actors that are celebrated in the way that I have been. I feel incredibly lucky.

More than good co-actors, if you have understanding co-actors, it becomes easier to relate with them. Many actors become insecure and get personal, which is not right.

I'm very lucky. I do voiceovers, 'Family Guy,' on and on, and quite frankly, I'm one of the luckiest actors in the world. I was able to create a character who became iconic.

As actors, for the most part, there's that neuroses most of us possess where, in a day of watching, this character get killed off of this show, and that character get killed off of that show - one never knows.

As actors, sometimes we want our character to go somewhere different than it goes, but that's being an actor.

William Hartnell was one of the finest character actors of our time, and as a fan, I want to make sure that I do him justice.

You hear stories of intense actors who can't shed their character and who don't know who they are for a week or two after. I'm not that guy, man.

While it's great that some actors can do any character with conviction, I'd probably look odd doing anything unreal.

There are so many brilliant, trained actors of color in America. If you just think about it, every year in the spring Julliard and NYU and Yale and hundreds of schools across the country graduate classes of trained actors, and in those classes are actors of color. So to say that there aren't enough actors of color is factually inaccurate.

My favorite actors are actors who are enigmatic and mysterious and never make the obvious choice in terms of the projects they do or who they work with or their craft. But I think that the less I know about an actor, the more chance I have of allowing their own persona to kind of slip away so I can get completely lost in the character they're playing, and the more that people think they know about your personal life, the more difficult it becomes to preserve that.

Actors are here to perform various kind of roles and we represent some another character. You can't judge us by what we portray on screen.

I play the sort of character who would sell his grandmother for career advancement, something I've come across a lot with actors.

Honestly, when I am offered a film, I look at the story, character, director, producer and co-actors while giving a nod.

I think it's worse for actors, though, because people have to choose you. As a director, I get to choose the actors, but most of the time, actors have to be chosen in order to work.

You couldn't hope to make a drama and have people rewriting on the day and having the actors making suggestions, "Wouldn't it be funny if my character did this?" "No. You're the actor. I'll tell you what to do."

I love Kimberly Peirce. Incredibly intense is a good way of describing her. Brutally honest. Really sharp. She's a director for actors. That's what she's best at, sitting down with an actor and just getting to the heart of what a scene is. And getting to the heart of not just what the scene is and the character is, but what you are, and how to build that bridge between the "me" and the character, and those emotions.

Any character that you come up with or create is a piece of you. You're putting yourself into that character, but there's the guise of the character. So there's a certain amount of safety in the character, where you feel more safe being the character than you do being just you

I'm not that complicated as an actor. I have a formula in which I work, yeah. But not like Sean Penn does. Sean is one of the few actors I know who can work like that, actually becoming the character he is playing, and get consistent results. I don't believe you can ever be someone else. You manifest different levels of your own personality to come up with a character.

A lot of actors like saying, 'Don't judge a character; you might fall in love with him!' Not me.

For me, what makes great actors, always is how truthful they are to the character and the story and the emotion that they're trying to tell.

In this country, you have movie actors and theatre actors and television actors

I know there are some actors who won't switch their accents off when they're on set and like to be called by their character's names. That works for them, and that's great.

Actors usually respond to minor aspects of their own character or things that even feel disparate from themselves.

There are lots of wonderful actors doing animated films these days, but I prefer it when you can't recognise them - it means they've really become the character.

I don't think a lot of actors talk about it, but there's usually a process where you essentially purge yourself of the character that you played prior to the movie.

I love character actors. If I'm switching channels, and something with Slim Pickens is on, or Walter Brennan, I'm stuck. I have to watch it.

I have always wanted to do a book about actors because I think that the death of a character is a tremendously emotional experience.

Any script, even like The Founder, if it's something that I imagine myself playing this character or that character - any of the characters, basically - how do we flesh these characters out to be good enough to have amazing actors that come in that make it really difficult for them to say no? Even though I'm not right for any of those parts, that's just kind of how we go about it.

Imported actors, like certain wines, sometimes do not stand the ocean trip. This can be as true of American actors in Europe as it is of European actors in America.

Once the scene is over, I come out of it. I don't carry the character with me for long as many actors do.

You have actors you've worked with previously, and you have actors you haven't worked with that you've seen in things where you know they can work in these parts. And then there are actors who blow you away, who surprise you.

Basically, I would like to be considered for roles that are well-written. I think that part of the problem that we've had as actors is that they insist on looking at us as Latino actors and not as actors, period.

We as actors doubt up until the last minute that we can be this person. So everything matters, the more work you do, you get in touch with who the character is.