Character Quotes

As human beings, of course, we're all compromised and complex and contradictory and if a screenplay can express those contradictions within a character and if there's room for me to express them, that's a part I'd love to play, so much more than a character who is heroic and one-dimensional.

For four years doing that same character all the time kind of bothered me. Butit opened up a lot of doors.

Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principals.

On the stage you develop a character that's different from yourself. In a film they're always saying, 'Walk over here. Say this line. Be you.'

The low points I had all helped make up my character, so I probably wouldn't want to do away with them because I like being flawed and I like having them help me grow and change and become better and stronger.

If I'm doing my job as an actor, the audience knows everything I know about the character.

Sow an act and you reap a habit. Sow a habit and you reap a character. Sow a character and you reap a destiny.

There's one thing everyone should understand: I like my character.

But I used to have a bit of a gambling problem. And that would have been the answer to my prayers. It got worse when I started playing this character, too.

The American character looks always as if it had just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has an all too professional air.

The theater of the mind is impossible to compete with, and I like the idea that with a few suggestions, each reader forms in his or her own mind what a character or a place looks like.

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 costume that I wear on the show is a little snug and doesn't leave a whole lot to the imagination. I don't have a problem with it because of the way this character's been written.

Character is destiny.

I mean one of the basic rules when you're acting is that you mustn't stand in judgement on a character, you mustn't say Hitler was a bad man because you can't act in that way.

It's all about exploring the more unpredictable aspects in the character, not just fighting people.

I am very aware that playwrights, particularly good ones, have a intention for everything they write. Language and punctuation is used specifically, and most of the time actors can find wonderful clues about character in the rhythm and cadence of the language used.

Like at Halloween: I knew I'd arrived when I saw people dressing up on Halloween as my character.

I think it kind of took being a character actor to kind of now enter into leading ladies.

The moral and intellectual character of the Africans is widely different in different nations.

Sports do not build character. They reveal it.

If you're lucky, and not a lot of actors are these days, you get the chance to create a character.

I'll see a photograph of a character and try to copy them on to my face. I think I'm really observant, and thinking how a person is put together, seeing them on the street and noticing subtle things about them that make them who they are.

Hitler was such an anomalous character - he was so over-the-top chaotic in his approach to statesmanship, his manner and in the violence which overwhelmed the country initially. I think diplomats around the world... felt like something like that simply would not be tolerated by the people of Germany.

We started a movement... to build character, citizenship and confidence in young people.

Good luck is the willing handmaid of a upright and energetic character, and conscientious observance of duty.

I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked onto the stage he was fully born.

I started writing morning pages just to keep my hand in, you know, just because I was a writer and I didn't know what else to do but write. And then one day as I was writing, a character came sort of strolling in and I realized, Oh my God, I don't have to be just a screenwriter. I can write novels.

I don't know how many times I can sit there and talk about my character or my life. It's interesting to talk about experiences in the context of something you're doing for somebody else, and particularly if you can persuade others to join you in your support.

In the time between when you first read a script and are offered the role and the time when you begin to shoot, I really love putting in the time and work on that and getting a solid backstory to a character and researching all that I can about what that person does for a vocation or their upbringing or where they're from.