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Character Quotes



"I prefer to work with grey characters rather than black and white."


"And that's what the audience was feeling too, as they watched the show and as they watch it now. And overriding all of that is the way it was written. It was written honestly. There was never any manufactured laugh. There was never compromising of character."


"You know like it has its own personality, its own character."


"The head writer loves that my character is a boor."


"I read the script and try not to bring anything personal into it. I make notes, talk to the director and we decide what kinds of shades should be in the character."


"I think so, Silence of the Lambs was a great, suspenseful thriller and I would expect Red Dragon to be similar. And I think it's very character driven."


"Yeah, it is, because it's a real discovery of your inner resources, you know. That's what my character is all about and what my playing is all about. But to get up there and just go inside and draw out something that makes you feel good first and foremost."


"I think I would not be described as a character actor in that I don't take on characteristics which are very alien to me."


"I once did a role which I couldn't rehearse in my street clothes, I had to have the character's costume on before I could rehearse it. I just couldn't think as the character unless I looked like him, or I knew that I looked like him."


"No not pigeon holed me as an actor, or as a character, or as to what I could do - but what I would do... and the fact is the things you don't do are almost as important as as the things that you do."


"Usually I'm frustrated when I look at my films and I don't believe that I've made a real transformation beyond my usual sets of gestures and expressions. I still have this nagging feeling that it's me, that I didn't create a unique character."


"Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain."


"My favorite part is the preparation because you read on the page, you get this character."


"The willow which bends to the tempest, often escapes better than the oak which resists it; and so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character."


"When I was doing Bean more than I've done him in the last few years, I did strange things - like appearing on chat shows in character as Mr. Bean."


"There's really one character for every actor. The voyage is to find that one character."


"I don't think, there's no possible way for me, anyway, to play a character that I haven't found some sort of sublime compassion for and I related to Deborah on a way that almost, initially, almost in a way maybe someone in the audience might."


"Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries."


"I feel like I've come out of this grown up, maybe because I live through the character vicariously and she grows up so much during the course of this story."


"Having your own character in a video game is pretty cool."


"Inside of all the makeup and the character and makeup, it's you, and I think that's what the audience is really interested in... you, how you're going to cope with the situation, the obstacles, the troubles that the writer put in front of you."


"It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character."



"The reason why parents mistreat their children has less to do with character and temperament than with the fact that they were mistreated themselves and were not permitted to defend themselves."


"She's a very charismatic character, and she holds the whole play together."


"In disposition the Negro is joyous, flexible, and indolent; while the many nations which compose this race present a singular diversity of intellectual character, of which the far extreme is the lowest grade of humanity."
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