I'm involved in some action scenes, so they'll train me for that. I'll be working with my acting coach to prepare for my character.
- Aaliyah
People tend to overestimate my character," I say quietly. "They think that because I'm small, or a girl, or a Stiff, I can't possibly be cruel. But they're wrong.
- Veronica Roth
I don't have to live the lives of my characters to write about them. It's about really putting yourself in their shoes.
- Jodi Picoult
... except when I get down and write...then I let my imagination go to places I never knew existed and my characters invade my mind.
- Mark Alders
Heart is what drives us and determines our fate. That is what I need for my characters in my books: a passionate heart. I need mavericks, dissidents, adventurers, outsiders and rebels, who ask questions, bend the rules and take risks.
- Isabel Allende
My character is self-important, poorly informed, well-intentioned but an idiot,... So we said, Let's give him a promotion.
- Stephen Colbert
They killed my character off and as God would have it, just when they told me I would never work again, I got cast in a little program called Roots, and as they would say, the rest is history.
- John Amos
I am more spontaneous than my character.
- Gillian Anderson
Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have - life itself.
- Walter Anderson
I'm trying to learn to smoke, which is rather weird when everyone is trying to stop. I'm not a smoker. But my character only smokes as an affectation.
- Francesca Annis
I mean simply to say that I want my characters to suggest the background in themselves, even when it is not visible. I want them to be so powerfully realized that we cannot imagine them apart from their physical and social context even when we see them in empty space.
- Michelangelo Antonioni
In each of my characters there is a little of me. Not strictly autobiographical but a little piece of my soul.
- Dario Argento
I'm 25, so I've already gone through what my character Ged goes through, though it's on a general scale because I haven't studied at a wizard's school.
- Shawn Ashmore
Where they couldn't pick holes in our arguments they would drive horses and carriages through my character.
- Julian Assange
Delicious days ahead for solitude and writing and, oh yes, the holiday meal with family. Live with my characters until term starts in 2012!
- Stella Atrium
I'm not interested in cutting the feet off my characters or stretching them to make them fit my certain political view.
- Margaret Atwood
I can move my characters through it easily, because I understand the background; I've really studied it.
- Jean M Auel
I probably read 100 times more than I write, but that way when I move my characters through it, I know.
- Jean M Auel
My characters shall have, after a little trouble, all that they desire.
- Jane Austen
Like at Halloween: I knew I'd arrived when I saw people dressing up on Halloween as my character.
- Jane Badler
My writing has gone to bits - like my character. I am simply a self-conscious nerve in pain.
- Oscar Wilde
I don't like to come at my character from some really technical place.
- Eric Bana
My character was obnoxious, had stinky feet and wore things like purple tights and a yellow top. I hated the clothes.
- Andrea Barber
The fact that I like to make characters doesn't mean that I like to watch my characters being made, my performance.
- Javier Bardem
There was no difference between my characters and the life my readers were going to have to face.
- Carl Barks
A lot of my work has to do with not allowing my characters to have an ego in a way that the stomach doesn't have an ego when it's wanting to throw up. It just does it.
- Matthew Barney
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.
- Drew Barrymore
I never act my characters - I am them.
- Drew Barrymore
I don't mind a little Sturm und Drang. When I was doing 'Riding in Cars With Boys,' I wouldn't smile at anybody, because my character, Bev, was angry at the world. I'm the opposite. Inside my head I'd be like, God, I'll explain to you at the end of shooting that I'm not this person.
- Drew Barrymore
My mother was a royal virgin," Peterson said, "and my father a shower of gold. My childhood was pastoral and energetic and rich in experiences which developed my character. As a young man I was noble in reason, infinite in faculty, in form express and admirable, and in apprehension..." Peterson went on and on and although he was, in a sense, lying, in a sense he was not.
- Donald Barthelme
I'd write of people and places like I knew, and I'd make my characters talk everyday English; and I'd let the sun rise and set in the usual quiet way without much fuss over the fact. If I had to have villains at all, I'd give them a chance, Anne--I'd give them a chance. There are some terrible bad men the world, I suppose, but you'd have to go a long piece to find them...But most of us have got a little decency somewhere in us. Keep on writing, Anne.
- L M Montgomery
...I'm sorry, and a little dissatisfied as well. Miss Stacy told me long ago that by the time I was twenty my character would be formed, for good or evil. I don't feel that it's what it should be. It's full of flaws.' 'So's everybody's,' said Aunt Jamesina cheerfully. 'Mine's cracked in a hundred places. Your Miss Stacy likely meant that when you are twenty your character would have got its permanent bent in one direction or 'tother, and would go on developing in that line.
- L M Montgomery
Someone who can search for something is happy. Searching gives a meaning to life. Nowadays it's not so easy to find something you might be looking for. The most important thing, however, is the search itself, the way you take. It's not so important where it leads. that's why my characters are always looking for something, maybe only a cat, a sheep or a wife, but that is at least the beginning of a story.
- Haruki Murakami
I truly believe the appeal of my novel ranges in readers from ages 8 to 108. I always challenge myself in my storytelling to make certain that readers of all ages can connect with my character through her journey. I promise you will fall in love with Willow Krimble if you take the journey with her.
- Giuseppe Bianco
I grew up below the poverty line; I didn't have as much as other people did. I think it made me stronger as a person, it built my character. Now I have a 4.0 grade point average and I want to go to college, and just become a better person.
- Justin Bieber
Before I thought there was a common denominator between my films - as if all my characters were sisters - but I'm not so sure now.
- Juliette Binoche
I've never thought of my characters as being sad. On the contrary, they are full of life. They didn't choose tragedy. Tragedy chose them.
- Juliette Binoche
A lot of the time I get obsessed by little nerdy things in my corner that no one else is interested in. I have that nerd factor in my character.
- Bjork
I remember one time that I was filming a scene in whych my character rides through Troy on a chariot. I just looked around at this incredible set thinking 'This is the life'.
- Orlando Bloom
What I remember when I started to write was how I couldn't wait to get up in the morning to get to my characters.
- Judy Blume
I became, and remain, my characters' close and intent watcher: their director, never. Their creator I cannot feel that I was, or am.
- Elizabeth Bowen
And while I might not always agree with the viewpoint I have to portray, because I play a district attorney, as an actress I can always tell myself that my character is trying to take the moral high ground.
- Lara Flynn Boyle
I was supposed to write a romantic comedy, but my characters broke up.
- Ann Brashares
Testing of self is a regular part of our own lives, so it seems natural to make it a part of the lives of my characters, as well, albeit on a much different level.
- Terry Brooks
My life needed to be saved. Not just Foxy. That's my character. That's my work. Inga is a person.
- Foxy Brown
I do not use profanity in my novels. My characters all go to church.
- Nicholas Sparks
I very seldom, very seldom, even know what my characters look like.
- Nicholas Sparks
None of my characters are rich or famous, and the situations they find themselves in could happen to anyone.
- Nicholas Sparks
I'll write maybe one long paragraph describing the events, then a page or two breaking the events into chapters, and then reams of pages delving into my characters. After that, I'm ready to begin.
- Anne Tyler
I write because I want more than one life; I insist on a wider selection. It's greed, plain and simple. When my characters join the circus, I'm joining the circus. Although I'm happily married, I spent a great deal of time mentally living with incompatible husbands.
- Anne Tyler
I consciously try to end my novels at a point where I won't have to wonder about my characters ever again.
- Anne Tyler
I expect that any day now, I will have said all I have to say; I'll have used up all my characters, and then I'll be free to get on with my real life.
- Anne Tyler
Then there's going to be another project I am involved with, in fact, I'm going back to film it next week. It's a game for the Internet called Advance Warriors, and my character is Max, who is blind, but he has special powers. It will be a new game played on the Internet.
- Jeremy Bulloch
My characters are quite as real to me as so-called real people; which is one reason why I'm not subject to what is known as loneliness. I have plenty of company.
- William S Burroughs
It's about avoiding reality through various escape routes that become addictions and lead to Hell. My character is addicted to television, chocolate, coffee, to her dream of her son, which has no basis in reality.
- Ellen Burstyn
Actually, I get a little say in what my character would or wouldn't do.
- Steve Burton
I get to experiment with a lot of looks with my character so that's really fun for me. It's like getting to paint a new canvas everyday.
- Sophia Bush
I always find stuff in my characters to relate to.
- Gerard Butler
To what extent does anybody control his destiny? Life is very much like falling of the edge of a cliff. You have complete freedom to make all the choices you want to take on your way down. My characters choose to yearn and not lose hope even when the odds are completely against them. It doesn't make the landing at the end of that fall any less painful but, somehow, it helps them keep a little dignity their bone broken body.
- Etgar Keret
All of my characters have a glint of madness.
- Nicolas Cage
No. Because I'm not a cold plate of m-m-macaroni. I'm a warm-hearted person. It's the basis of my character.
- Truman Capote
Though I still turn up my coat-collar in a lonely way and am always looking at myself in mirrors, they're only habits and give no clue at all to my character, whatever that is. The most difficult performance in the world is acting naturally isn't it? Everything else is artful.
- Angela Carter
I leave to others the decision as to the good or evil tendencies of my character, but such as it is it shines upon my countenance, and there it can easily be detected by any physiognomist.
- Giacomo Casanova
I would like to think that I'm more different from my character than I am.
- Sarah Chalke
One way I differ from my character, Coach Taylor, is that I never would have taken this faraway job without my wife's consent.
- Kyle Chandler
I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.
- Stephen King
From Ernest Hemingway's stories, I learned to listen within my stories for what went unsaid by my characters.
- Nadine Gordimer
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.
- Eric Clapton
I'm always determined that as a novelist I'm going to go out there and research my characters very thoroughly before I start writing.
- Chris Cleave
The idea that every time you do a film you're supposed to be tortured confuses me. I mean, guys who say, 'Oh, it's really tough, my character is really suffering' -come on. For us, even in the rotten ones we've had a good time. I don't think you have to suffer.
- George Clooney
My interest in this pack of failures betrays my character.
- Leonard Cohen
I love the idea that somebody is going to compare me to my character or think that I am like my character when they see me. I feel like that is a role that I am willing to fulfill.
- Monique Coleman
My character, Taylor McKessie, is a little bit brighter in the math and science department than I am... okay, a lot.
- Monique Coleman
I don't try to live the life of my character but I think it's inevitable that there is some carry-over into your life.
- Toni Collette
I really fall in love with my characters, even the bad ones. I love getting together with them. They tell me what to do; they take me on a wild and wonderful trip.
- Jackie Collins
I write about real people in disguise. If anything, my characters are toned down-the truth is much more bizarre.
- Jackie Collins
I always try to make my characters people, and yet I always want to entertain.
- Jeffrey Combs
The head writer loves that my character is a boor.
- Rob Corddry
I write because, if I don't, my characters will murder me in my sleep.
- Astrid Artistikem Cruz
A lot of people loved to hate my character on 24. I want to be the character people love to love.
- Elisha Cuthbert
No matter what's happening in my life, I can always get lost in the romances of my characters.
- Amanda Seyfried
I didn't see my character, Core, as a cannibal but as somebody who is extremely passionate and who doesn't have any conscience. She takes her passion to its complete extreme.
- Beatrice Dalle
My character is meant to know nothing about rap, and not to like it very much, but I know about it, because my kids make me listen to it. There's some rap I do like very much. I like Eminem, Blackalicious.
- Harrison Ford
My character was kidnapped by the Terminator and I was kidnapped by the Terminator production.
- Claire Danes
None of my characters seem to have had sex yet - I haven't written about that. And I wouldn't want to deal with what's happening in Oregon - the school shootings.
- Paula Danziger
Normally, I name my characters after famous comedians.
- Paula Danziger
But things such as 'Harry Potter', all I can do is shape my character, seek the director's approval on that, and basically take it from there. Professor Flitwick in 'Harry Potter', I kind of defined how I saw him from reading the book, and luckily that matched up with the director's vision.
- Warwick Davis
I thought my character definitely was very much in love with him and wanted to be with him, but I think at some point they were going to have to draw the line.
- Rosario Dawson
So I work hard to present the human side of my characters while not neglecting the plot.
- Jeffery Deaver
I've gone very far, far away, but my character keeps me close to home.
- Fran Drescher
Although there was a screenplay, the actors never knew what questions I was going to ask them, and all of my character's voice-over narration and scenes were added after the fact.
- Griffin Dunne
I always believed in my characters. I lived them.
- Irene Dunne
Because I killed a guy in real life, and because my character kills a guy onstage, they said I could never do anything this great again. I resented that.
- Charles S Dutton
I think my character's getting to the point where he can't even eat spaghetti with red sauce anymore, where he has horrible nightmares, he can't sleep anymore.
- George Eads
Let no man write my epitaph... When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then shall my character be vindicated, then may my epitaph be written.
- Robert Emmet
I always get inspiration from whatever characters say about my character.
- Robert Englund
People always tell me I'm nothing like my character. Well, hopefully not! He's a character who's very defined. He was purposefully written by Jo Rowling as very one-dimensional in the first few books, because you're supposed to hate him.
- Tom Felton
I'm about my characters.
- Abel Ferrara
I'm okay if people don't know who I am, but if you remember my character that would be great.
- America Ferrera
Joie est mon caractere,
C'est la faute a Voltaire;
Misere est mon trousseau
C'est la faute a Rousseau.
[Joy is my character,
'Tis the fault of Voltaire;
Misery is my trousseau
'Tis the fault of Rousseau.]
- Gavroche
- Victor Hugo
The worst evil is - and that's the product of censorship - is the self-censorship, because that twists spines, that destroys my character because I have to think something else and say something else, I have to always control myself.
- Milos Forman
Living gives you a better understanding of life. I would hope that my characters have become deeper and more rounded personalities. Wider travels have given me considerably greater insight into how cultural differences affect not only people, but politics and art.
- Alan Dean Foster
I enjoy listening to classical music and heavy metal. I play basketball and try to go diving at least once a year. I don't really have hobbies in the traditional sense... I engage in too many activities already through the actions of my characters.
- Alan Dean Foster
So I never spend a lot of time analyzing why people respond to my work. But I think that it's just the joy, a passion for life, that I think has always been in my characters. Beyond that, I'm just grateful for it.
- Michael J Fox
The doctors say it dates back to a film where I had these huge prosthetic breasts because my character was breast-feeding. The weight of them, and of the baby, did my back in.
- Anna Friel
I really fought to make my character not a stereotype. I play a soap star with dyed blonde hair.
- Sadie Frost
I've been killing characters my entire career, maybe I'm just a bloody minded bastard, I don't know, [but] when my characters are in danger, I want you to be afraid to turn the page (and to do that) you need to show right from the beginning that you're playing for keeps.
- George R R Martin
I lost 30 pounds to play my character in 'The Mexican', but people don't take to skinny mafia men, and I don't feel right when I'm thin.
- James Gandolfini
The first thing I read was of my character on the phone talking to Sydney's fiance. Though short, it was so beautifully written, and it made me laugh. I thought if I wanted to play a character, this would be it.
- Victor Garber
Up to that point I never really knew what my character would be expected to do, and prior to accepting the job I had actually turned down the role three times before finally giving in.
- Gil Gerard
I intend all my characters must escape from impossible situations; if they are not in trouble, then as a writer, I am.
- Cleveland W Gibson
The only person who had any control was Jonathan Harris. His character was so flamboyant that he was able to make things happen. My character was fairly one-dimensional, so I had my relationship with Dr. Smith and with the family.
- Mark Goddard
There's a certain way you stand to give yourself authority, which gives you the texture for the part. I chose that my character hadn't been married, he'd worked his way up the chain of command. For a small cameo role, I gave it a lot of thought.
- Mark Goddard
It's nice to play a character that has a soulful, dependent, close relationship. It must mean my character is interesting in some way.
- Jeff Goldblum
The pleasures of being a novelist are many. But the greatest by far is the manner in which I live through my characters; experiencing every detail of their story as it unfolds gradually and personally within my own creative psyche. I'm like a cat with untold lives, because each new book is my rebirth.
- Richelle E Goodrich
I think I'm a part of all the characters I play, definitely at different times in my life. In real life, I'm kind of a tomboy. I like to read a lot I like watching T.V. I don't think I'm as interesting as my characters, but I like doing what I do.
- Sprague Grayden
That's what he was saying, the civil rights movement - judge me for my character, not how black my skin is, not how yellow my skin is, how short I am, how tall or fat or thin; It's by my character.
- Pam Grier
If I were invited to a dinner party with my characters, I wouldn't show up.
- Dr Seuss
Every word I write is like a drop of my blood. If it's flowed passionately and long, I need time to recover from the emotion spent before I began a new story. My characters are my life. I have to respectfully and carefully move between them.
- Red Haircrow
My characters surprise me constantly. My characters are like my friends - I can give them advice, but they don't have to take it. If your characters are real, then they surprise you, just like real people.
- Laurell K Hamilton
There were definitely parts of my character I didn't approve of, and maybe from time to time I had moments when I didn't like myself much. But I got through each day as it came to me, and so far I'd survived every thing life had thrown at me. I could only hope that the survival was worth the price I'd paid.
- Charlaine Harris
I especially object to having my character assassinated by reference to events from my past which bear absolutely no relationship to the question of who the anthrax killer is.
- Steven Hatfill
How I would describe my characters is absolutely different from how I would describe myself.
- Salma Hayek
I also have a film coming up called Breaking Up, and my part in that was not written for a Latina, and my character is not particularly pretty or sexy or exotic.
- Salma Hayek
My character's kind of grown up with Katniss. The beginning of the story, they're more or less brother and sister than anything. They're best friends. They've been keeping each other alive. It's a little frustrating, for the character. As the character, not as me.
- Liam Hemsworth
If we get to shoot the third one, which I'm really hoping we do, the third one's great. There's a big uprising and rebellion, and my character Gale's a big part of that. If we get to shoot that, I'll be very, very pleased.
- Liam Hemsworth
To be honest, I think for part of my late teens my character didn't really develop very much. I was in a state of cold storage.
- Damon Hill
My character had been in the chair for seven years. He had gone through his anger, depression, drug and alcohol abuse. He had gone through everything, now he was up, he was happy, he was filled with his dream.
- Gregory Hines
My characters are fictional. I get ideas from real people, sometimes, but my characters always exist only in my head.
- S E Hinton
My characters are more like men than these real men are, see. They're rough and rude, they got hands and they got bellies. They hate and they lust; break the skin of civilization and you find the ape, roaring and red-handed.
- Robert E Howard
The more I think about myself, the more I'm persuaded that, as a person, I really don't exist. That is one of the reasons why I can't believe in any orthodox religion: I cannot believe in my own soul. No, I am a chemical compound, conditioned by environment and education. My "character" is simply a repertoire of acquired tricks, my conversation a repertoire of adaptations and echoes, my "feelings" are dictated by purely physical, external stimuli.
- Christopher Isherwood
I owe my characters nothing but honesty, and I owe my readers that and a ride worth taking.
- Ryan David Jahn
I always want to know what's wrong with you, why you ain't smiling. That's just my character; I just love people and want to see people having a good time.
- Wyclef Jean
My characters are driven by a passionate desire for justice. They are rebellious and incorruptible.
- Tahar Ben Jelloun
Writing is hard work, and if anything's true about the process, it's that fact that a good story is hard to find and even trickier to get on paper. What's less romantic than staring alone at a blank screen? And edgy? I've changed the cat little because I didn't know what my characters were going to say next.
- Adam Johnson
And from my character's point-of-view in Ravenous, he had been collected by Robert Carlyle's character, he had become infected by this ravenous, cannibalistic power, and he was making the best of it.
- Jeffrey Jones
My job is to help the functioning of the story, not to draw attention to myself, but to make my characters function within the story, to work for the benefit of the story, to make the whole thing work.
- Jeffrey Jones
People say that to me and I think what unites all my characters is that they are hurt; it's most accurate to say I play characters that are hurt but are responding to their environment.
- Ashley Judd
The idea that you might end up in a job that doesn't allow you to be who you are, over the course of a lifetime, is still one of the most chilling nightmares to me. It's a good metaphor for fears I have about losing my soul in some accidental, mundane way. So, to me, these jobs that my characters have are very loaded. They immediately suggest a complex character to me, a woman who is, say, a secretary, but also a vigilante on behalf of her own soul
- Miranda July
I just have my characters say my controversial opinions and then hide behind them.
- Mindy Kaling
I hate a movie that will end by telling you that the first thing you should do is learn to love yourself. That is so insulting and condescending, and so meaningless. My characters don't learn to love each other or themselves.
- Charlie Kaufman
I was in two episodes playing Christopher Reeve's character's emissary. They wanted to have my character announce Dr Swan's death, which I thought was exploitative.
- Margot Kidder
The trick is to try and justify every word on the page and make sure my character is the man who would say that.
- Ben Kingsley
My books are mine, and yet they are alien to me--as a child belongs to a parent and yet has a life of its own. I can guide and hope and nudge my characters this and that way, but in the end, they become what they become. I don't always like what they become myself, but like a parent, there are times when I just don't know what to do about it. Other times when I'm so proud of them I could bust.
- Laura Kinsale
As far as anybody in the rap game ever tryin' to assassinate my character, that's impossible. You talkin' about a man who has always walked the walk and talked the talk.
- Suge Knight
I used to send my characters into a fire that necessarily consumed them, but I have learned, a little, how to send them through the fire to a new place. The characters who do not change most notably Nakota in Cipher, Bibi in Skin, and Lena in Kink are motivated by an essential selfishness or self-centeredness, an unwillingness to relinquish control to the process, a refusal to become.
- Kathe Koja
I can create countries just as I can create the actions of my characters. That is why a lot of travel seems to me a waste of time.
- Jerzy Kosinski
I find it very hard to sit down and create an idea or especially a new character on command. Usually my characters evolve by accident out of some story context.
- John Kricfalusi
My character is somebody who is smaller in stature and yet who's strong, so to see the fighting situations between people who are not generally thought of being strong is in itself unusual and therefore interesting, I think.
- Chiaki Kuriyama
I've learned to let my characters speak and act the way they want to! I've tried to interfere but they just get angry at me and throw big rocks.
- Shandy L Kurth
Over and over I feel as if my characters know who they are, and what happens to them, and where they have been and where they will go, and what they are capable of doing, but they need me to write it down for them because their handwriting is so bad.
- Anne Lamott
I love action films. I'd love to do an action drama. I'm always looking to give my character something action-oriented to do.
- Taylor Lautner
Psychopaths... people who know the differences between right and wrong, but don't give a shit. That's what most of my characters are like.
- Elmore Leonard
Andrew has talked about my character being the conscience of the film, the heart of the film.
- Jared Leto
This was a mutual relationship, mutual on all levels, right from the way it started and all the way through. I don't accept that he had to completely desecrate my character.
- Monica Lewinsky
When one of my characters becomes aware of a magical element, it might be because the world is wider than we assume it to be, but it might also be a reminder to pay attention to what is here already, hidden only because it's been forgotten.
- Charles De Lint
I try to distinguish my characters from each other.
- Lucy Liu
So, it's cool that, yes, Hal Jordan is a superhero, but my character is a real-world hero in her own life.
- Blake Lively
The first night was awful because I was so afraid, and I was never more afraid because it was going out of my character to be outgoing and to be vulnerable and to be out there and onstage. My hands were sweaty and I couldn't swallow, and I drank a bottle of wine to calm my nerves.
- George Lopez
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.
- Wendie Malick
When I'm writing a novel, I'm dealing with a double life. I live in the present at the same time that I live in the past with my characters. It is this that makes a novelist so eccentric and unpleasant.
- John Phillips Marquand
It is one of the defects of my character that I cannot altogether dislike anyone who makes me laugh.
- W Somerset Maugham
There are times when I look over the various parts of my character with perplexity. I recognize that I am made up of several persons and that the person that at the moment has the upper hand will inevitably give place to another. But which is the real one? All of them or none?
- W Somerset Maugham
What I've learned in my life, it's a very interesting social study for me, to go back and forth between being the guy at home and being the guy on the road and being the guy in studio and being the guy in the interview. The environment around you has so much to do with your character, and when I'm home, my character really changes quite a bit.
- John Mayer
I love those preliminary conversations about who a character is. You try on wigs, shoes and clothes. It's preferable when it's not about looking pretty. It can get a little dull to just be cute. We talk about things like, maybe my character can't afford these Christian Louboutins.
- Rachel Mcadams
I remember that it was never that difficult for me to get a director to look up and pay attention to me. Mind you, I don't know if that's necessarily charm. But I've played roles where my character has to be charming and I've found it quite easy to do. I think some of it is in my bones, but some of it is more deliberate.
- James Mcavoy
I kind of embarked on a fruitless search to find information about my character, Frederick Aiken. And it was fruitless, unfortunately, because there's so little about him.
- James Mcavoy
We've still got a long haul ahead of is and I don't want to damn her rift away with my first, second, and third impressions, as my character analyses are usually for shit.
- Megan Mccafferty
For me it's even more interesting, because my character comes out of the shadow. It's a chance to really act emotionally, because the situation is an extreme one.
- Ian Mcdiarmid
Most of the time when I receive a script, it says something like 'Rosenberg is the fat, slovenly Mayor, who doesn't want the kids to use the skateboard park', or 'Stein is a pompous, rotund attorney, imposing to all.' It would be so freeing to get a script where my character is simply described as 'A Man'.
- Fred Melamed
My character is not flawless.
- Breckin Meyer
You can't have virtue without sin. What I'm after is having my characters' virtues defined by how they operate in a very sinful environment. That's how you test people.
- Frank Miller
My character in 'Prison Break' needs to be formidable. In reality, I'm not very tough at all.
- Wentworth Miller
I was always cutting dialogue out when we were rehearsing, and when I produced movies, too. I felt that people don't say things in life - they act, they do things. I always wanted my characters doing, rather than saying what they were doing - which was redundant.
- Donna Mills
My characters have undergone the same process of simplification as the colors. Now that they have been simplified, they appear more human and alive than if they had been represented in all their details.
- Joan Miro
I liked the way my character, Shane, was first introduced. You get introduced to her through this sexual action, and I thought that was so cool and just kind of summed up what she enjoys and who she is, to a certain extent. She's a complete sexual being and the great thing is that she doesn't apologize for it. It's just who she is. We rarely see women be able to do that on television.
- Katherine Moennig
If I take care of my character, my reputation will take care of me.
- Dwight L Moody
And a lesson in this movie is dig beneath the surface. And so with my words, with my character, I purposely created a character that was away from how you've known me thus far in my career.
- Shemar Moore
My character Esteban is a guy who really didn't think he was gonna be there at this point in his life. He's in his early 30s. He's got a son. He's raising his son as a single father.
- Esai Morales
I gradually work myself into a frenzy as the shoot approaches, while we're choosing the costumes or working with the make-up artist. I'm not so much interested in my character as the film itself.
- Jeanne Moreau
I was a Sedgewick without the smarts. It infused its way into me and I feel like it formed my character in a big way because of what I was exposed to.
- Rob Morrow
My character in 'Shame' is an outrageous person. Loud and uncompromising and I begged Steve McQueen to give me the job.
- Carey Mulligan
In the original script, my character was a basketball player rather than a boxer. I didn't think I could pull that off. I'm a little short to be a basketball player!
- Eddie Murphy
My knowledge of Mr. Forster's works is limited to one novel which I dislike; and anyway it was not he who fathered that trite little whimsy about characters getting out of hand; it is as old as the quills, although of course one sympathizes with his people if they try to wriggle out of that trip to India or whereever he takes them. My characters are galley slaves.
- Vladimir Nabokov
In terms of the frustration of my character, I suppose any teenager has probably gone through that, in terms of telling their parents, I want to do one thing, and their parent says no. I think parents sometimes forget that they were children.
- Parminder Nagra
I'm not the kind of actor that would know what my character had for breakfast last Tuesday.
- Liam Neeson
My character and good name are in my own keeping. Life with disgrace is dreadful. A glorious death is to be envied.
- Horatio Nelson
I think a lot of people relate to some of my characters' inner struggles.
- Edward Norton
Well, I don't feel that I've played so many bad guys, and I'm rot really drawn to villains per se. I think a lot of people relate to some of my characters' inner struggles.
- Edward Norton
I think that's what I really liked about Narc: My character has a real operatic range in a way that older movies used to have.
- Jason Patric
I've been doing this 17 years but I can tell you I have more websites now than I have ever had devoted to me or my past career or my character. When I got this show, I think I had two fans out there that had created websites on my behalf.
- Robert Patrick
Well, my mom is single and we've both been single at the same time over the last ten years, so I really related to the bond between my character and Diane's.
- Amanda Peet
You have very accurately described the difficulty of presenting my books on film: many of my characters are alone most of the time, and when they do talk, what they say is mostly lies. That can make for a pretty confusing film.
- Thomas Perry
As I entered this world, I would leave behind the nurturing of my family and my home, but in another sense I would take their protection with me. The lessons I had learned, the feelings of groundedness and belonging that have been woven into my character there, would be my companions on the journey.
- Sidney Poitier
I approach my character with the question: What would an animal think? How would an animal respond? A lot of times, it's quick action and no fear, and sometimes it's irrational fear. You don't always know.
- Victoria Pratt
I don't need all that much - I just need to know who my characters are and what kind of jam they're going to get into, and I'll write myself out of their jam.
- Richard Price
The interesting thing about my character Sylar is that my strengths as an actor seemed to go completely against the shape of a character in the shadow.
- Zachary Quinto
I will stipulate to having both French sea salt and a big bottle of extra virgin in my kitchen. And while the presence of both might go some small distance in pigeonholing me demographically, neither one of them makes me a good person. They are mute and useless indicators of the content of my character.
- David Rakoff
How would I behave in a situation that caused me to summon the essence of my character? The tragedy inspired me to test myself. I wanted to reveal to myself who I was: the kind of person who died, or the kind of person who overcame circumstances to help himself and others
- Aron Ralston
My characters aren't losers. They're rebels. They win by their refusal to play by everyone else's rules.
- Harold Ramis
I don't think my spirituality has affected my character. I feel like my character is much more cynical about his beliefs, and I think I have to kind of drop what I believe in order to play him.
- Jason Ritter
- Aaliyah
People tend to overestimate my character," I say quietly. "They think that because I'm small, or a girl, or a Stiff, I can't possibly be cruel. But they're wrong.
- Veronica Roth
I don't have to live the lives of my characters to write about them. It's about really putting yourself in their shoes.
- Jodi Picoult
... except when I get down and write...then I let my imagination go to places I never knew existed and my characters invade my mind.
- Mark Alders
Heart is what drives us and determines our fate. That is what I need for my characters in my books: a passionate heart. I need mavericks, dissidents, adventurers, outsiders and rebels, who ask questions, bend the rules and take risks.
- Isabel Allende
My character is self-important, poorly informed, well-intentioned but an idiot,... So we said, Let's give him a promotion.
- Stephen Colbert
They killed my character off and as God would have it, just when they told me I would never work again, I got cast in a little program called Roots, and as they would say, the rest is history.
- John Amos
I am more spontaneous than my character.
- Gillian Anderson
Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have - life itself.
- Walter Anderson
I'm trying to learn to smoke, which is rather weird when everyone is trying to stop. I'm not a smoker. But my character only smokes as an affectation.
- Francesca Annis
I mean simply to say that I want my characters to suggest the background in themselves, even when it is not visible. I want them to be so powerfully realized that we cannot imagine them apart from their physical and social context even when we see them in empty space.
- Michelangelo Antonioni
In each of my characters there is a little of me. Not strictly autobiographical but a little piece of my soul.
- Dario Argento
I'm 25, so I've already gone through what my character Ged goes through, though it's on a general scale because I haven't studied at a wizard's school.
- Shawn Ashmore
Where they couldn't pick holes in our arguments they would drive horses and carriages through my character.
- Julian Assange
Delicious days ahead for solitude and writing and, oh yes, the holiday meal with family. Live with my characters until term starts in 2012!
- Stella Atrium
I'm not interested in cutting the feet off my characters or stretching them to make them fit my certain political view.
- Margaret Atwood
I can move my characters through it easily, because I understand the background; I've really studied it.
- Jean M Auel
I probably read 100 times more than I write, but that way when I move my characters through it, I know.
- Jean M Auel
My characters shall have, after a little trouble, all that they desire.
- Jane Austen
Like at Halloween: I knew I'd arrived when I saw people dressing up on Halloween as my character.
- Jane Badler
My writing has gone to bits - like my character. I am simply a self-conscious nerve in pain.
- Oscar Wilde
I don't like to come at my character from some really technical place.
- Eric Bana
My character was obnoxious, had stinky feet and wore things like purple tights and a yellow top. I hated the clothes.
- Andrea Barber
The fact that I like to make characters doesn't mean that I like to watch my characters being made, my performance.
- Javier Bardem
There was no difference between my characters and the life my readers were going to have to face.
- Carl Barks
A lot of my work has to do with not allowing my characters to have an ego in a way that the stomach doesn't have an ego when it's wanting to throw up. It just does it.
- Matthew Barney
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.
- Drew Barrymore
I never act my characters - I am them.
- Drew Barrymore
I don't mind a little Sturm und Drang. When I was doing 'Riding in Cars With Boys,' I wouldn't smile at anybody, because my character, Bev, was angry at the world. I'm the opposite. Inside my head I'd be like, God, I'll explain to you at the end of shooting that I'm not this person.
- Drew Barrymore
My mother was a royal virgin," Peterson said, "and my father a shower of gold. My childhood was pastoral and energetic and rich in experiences which developed my character. As a young man I was noble in reason, infinite in faculty, in form express and admirable, and in apprehension..." Peterson went on and on and although he was, in a sense, lying, in a sense he was not.
- Donald Barthelme
I'd write of people and places like I knew, and I'd make my characters talk everyday English; and I'd let the sun rise and set in the usual quiet way without much fuss over the fact. If I had to have villains at all, I'd give them a chance, Anne--I'd give them a chance. There are some terrible bad men the world, I suppose, but you'd have to go a long piece to find them...But most of us have got a little decency somewhere in us. Keep on writing, Anne.
- L M Montgomery
...I'm sorry, and a little dissatisfied as well. Miss Stacy told me long ago that by the time I was twenty my character would be formed, for good or evil. I don't feel that it's what it should be. It's full of flaws.' 'So's everybody's,' said Aunt Jamesina cheerfully. 'Mine's cracked in a hundred places. Your Miss Stacy likely meant that when you are twenty your character would have got its permanent bent in one direction or 'tother, and would go on developing in that line.
- L M Montgomery
Someone who can search for something is happy. Searching gives a meaning to life. Nowadays it's not so easy to find something you might be looking for. The most important thing, however, is the search itself, the way you take. It's not so important where it leads. that's why my characters are always looking for something, maybe only a cat, a sheep or a wife, but that is at least the beginning of a story.
- Haruki Murakami
I truly believe the appeal of my novel ranges in readers from ages 8 to 108. I always challenge myself in my storytelling to make certain that readers of all ages can connect with my character through her journey. I promise you will fall in love with Willow Krimble if you take the journey with her.
- Giuseppe Bianco
I grew up below the poverty line; I didn't have as much as other people did. I think it made me stronger as a person, it built my character. Now I have a 4.0 grade point average and I want to go to college, and just become a better person.
- Justin Bieber
Before I thought there was a common denominator between my films - as if all my characters were sisters - but I'm not so sure now.
- Juliette Binoche
I've never thought of my characters as being sad. On the contrary, they are full of life. They didn't choose tragedy. Tragedy chose them.
- Juliette Binoche
A lot of the time I get obsessed by little nerdy things in my corner that no one else is interested in. I have that nerd factor in my character.
- Bjork
I remember one time that I was filming a scene in whych my character rides through Troy on a chariot. I just looked around at this incredible set thinking 'This is the life'.
- Orlando Bloom
What I remember when I started to write was how I couldn't wait to get up in the morning to get to my characters.
- Judy Blume
I became, and remain, my characters' close and intent watcher: their director, never. Their creator I cannot feel that I was, or am.
- Elizabeth Bowen
And while I might not always agree with the viewpoint I have to portray, because I play a district attorney, as an actress I can always tell myself that my character is trying to take the moral high ground.
- Lara Flynn Boyle
I was supposed to write a romantic comedy, but my characters broke up.
- Ann Brashares
Testing of self is a regular part of our own lives, so it seems natural to make it a part of the lives of my characters, as well, albeit on a much different level.
- Terry Brooks
My life needed to be saved. Not just Foxy. That's my character. That's my work. Inga is a person.
- Foxy Brown
I do not use profanity in my novels. My characters all go to church.
- Nicholas Sparks
I very seldom, very seldom, even know what my characters look like.
- Nicholas Sparks
None of my characters are rich or famous, and the situations they find themselves in could happen to anyone.
- Nicholas Sparks
I'll write maybe one long paragraph describing the events, then a page or two breaking the events into chapters, and then reams of pages delving into my characters. After that, I'm ready to begin.
- Anne Tyler
I write because I want more than one life; I insist on a wider selection. It's greed, plain and simple. When my characters join the circus, I'm joining the circus. Although I'm happily married, I spent a great deal of time mentally living with incompatible husbands.
- Anne Tyler
I consciously try to end my novels at a point where I won't have to wonder about my characters ever again.
- Anne Tyler
I expect that any day now, I will have said all I have to say; I'll have used up all my characters, and then I'll be free to get on with my real life.
- Anne Tyler
Then there's going to be another project I am involved with, in fact, I'm going back to film it next week. It's a game for the Internet called Advance Warriors, and my character is Max, who is blind, but he has special powers. It will be a new game played on the Internet.
- Jeremy Bulloch
My characters are quite as real to me as so-called real people; which is one reason why I'm not subject to what is known as loneliness. I have plenty of company.
- William S Burroughs
It's about avoiding reality through various escape routes that become addictions and lead to Hell. My character is addicted to television, chocolate, coffee, to her dream of her son, which has no basis in reality.
- Ellen Burstyn
Actually, I get a little say in what my character would or wouldn't do.
- Steve Burton
I get to experiment with a lot of looks with my character so that's really fun for me. It's like getting to paint a new canvas everyday.
- Sophia Bush
I always find stuff in my characters to relate to.
- Gerard Butler
To what extent does anybody control his destiny? Life is very much like falling of the edge of a cliff. You have complete freedom to make all the choices you want to take on your way down. My characters choose to yearn and not lose hope even when the odds are completely against them. It doesn't make the landing at the end of that fall any less painful but, somehow, it helps them keep a little dignity their bone broken body.
- Etgar Keret
All of my characters have a glint of madness.
- Nicolas Cage
No. Because I'm not a cold plate of m-m-macaroni. I'm a warm-hearted person. It's the basis of my character.
- Truman Capote
Though I still turn up my coat-collar in a lonely way and am always looking at myself in mirrors, they're only habits and give no clue at all to my character, whatever that is. The most difficult performance in the world is acting naturally isn't it? Everything else is artful.
- Angela Carter
I leave to others the decision as to the good or evil tendencies of my character, but such as it is it shines upon my countenance, and there it can easily be detected by any physiognomist.
- Giacomo Casanova
I would like to think that I'm more different from my character than I am.
- Sarah Chalke
One way I differ from my character, Coach Taylor, is that I never would have taken this faraway job without my wife's consent.
- Kyle Chandler
I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.
- Stephen King
From Ernest Hemingway's stories, I learned to listen within my stories for what went unsaid by my characters.
- Nadine Gordimer
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.
- Eric Clapton
I'm always determined that as a novelist I'm going to go out there and research my characters very thoroughly before I start writing.
- Chris Cleave
The idea that every time you do a film you're supposed to be tortured confuses me. I mean, guys who say, 'Oh, it's really tough, my character is really suffering' -come on. For us, even in the rotten ones we've had a good time. I don't think you have to suffer.
- George Clooney
My interest in this pack of failures betrays my character.
- Leonard Cohen
I love the idea that somebody is going to compare me to my character or think that I am like my character when they see me. I feel like that is a role that I am willing to fulfill.
- Monique Coleman
My character, Taylor McKessie, is a little bit brighter in the math and science department than I am... okay, a lot.
- Monique Coleman
I don't try to live the life of my character but I think it's inevitable that there is some carry-over into your life.
- Toni Collette
I really fall in love with my characters, even the bad ones. I love getting together with them. They tell me what to do; they take me on a wild and wonderful trip.
- Jackie Collins
I write about real people in disguise. If anything, my characters are toned down-the truth is much more bizarre.
- Jackie Collins
I always try to make my characters people, and yet I always want to entertain.
- Jeffrey Combs
The head writer loves that my character is a boor.
- Rob Corddry
I write because, if I don't, my characters will murder me in my sleep.
- Astrid Artistikem Cruz
A lot of people loved to hate my character on 24. I want to be the character people love to love.
- Elisha Cuthbert
No matter what's happening in my life, I can always get lost in the romances of my characters.
- Amanda Seyfried
I didn't see my character, Core, as a cannibal but as somebody who is extremely passionate and who doesn't have any conscience. She takes her passion to its complete extreme.
- Beatrice Dalle
My character is meant to know nothing about rap, and not to like it very much, but I know about it, because my kids make me listen to it. There's some rap I do like very much. I like Eminem, Blackalicious.
- Harrison Ford
My character was kidnapped by the Terminator and I was kidnapped by the Terminator production.
- Claire Danes
None of my characters seem to have had sex yet - I haven't written about that. And I wouldn't want to deal with what's happening in Oregon - the school shootings.
- Paula Danziger
Normally, I name my characters after famous comedians.
- Paula Danziger
But things such as 'Harry Potter', all I can do is shape my character, seek the director's approval on that, and basically take it from there. Professor Flitwick in 'Harry Potter', I kind of defined how I saw him from reading the book, and luckily that matched up with the director's vision.
- Warwick Davis
I thought my character definitely was very much in love with him and wanted to be with him, but I think at some point they were going to have to draw the line.
- Rosario Dawson
So I work hard to present the human side of my characters while not neglecting the plot.
- Jeffery Deaver
I've gone very far, far away, but my character keeps me close to home.
- Fran Drescher
Although there was a screenplay, the actors never knew what questions I was going to ask them, and all of my character's voice-over narration and scenes were added after the fact.
- Griffin Dunne
I always believed in my characters. I lived them.
- Irene Dunne
Because I killed a guy in real life, and because my character kills a guy onstage, they said I could never do anything this great again. I resented that.
- Charles S Dutton
I think my character's getting to the point where he can't even eat spaghetti with red sauce anymore, where he has horrible nightmares, he can't sleep anymore.
- George Eads
Let no man write my epitaph... When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then shall my character be vindicated, then may my epitaph be written.
- Robert Emmet
I always get inspiration from whatever characters say about my character.
- Robert Englund
People always tell me I'm nothing like my character. Well, hopefully not! He's a character who's very defined. He was purposefully written by Jo Rowling as very one-dimensional in the first few books, because you're supposed to hate him.
- Tom Felton
I'm about my characters.
- Abel Ferrara
I'm okay if people don't know who I am, but if you remember my character that would be great.
- America Ferrera
Joie est mon caractere,
C'est la faute a Voltaire;
Misere est mon trousseau
C'est la faute a Rousseau.
[Joy is my character,
'Tis the fault of Voltaire;
Misery is my trousseau
'Tis the fault of Rousseau.]
- Gavroche
- Victor Hugo
The worst evil is - and that's the product of censorship - is the self-censorship, because that twists spines, that destroys my character because I have to think something else and say something else, I have to always control myself.
- Milos Forman
Living gives you a better understanding of life. I would hope that my characters have become deeper and more rounded personalities. Wider travels have given me considerably greater insight into how cultural differences affect not only people, but politics and art.
- Alan Dean Foster
I enjoy listening to classical music and heavy metal. I play basketball and try to go diving at least once a year. I don't really have hobbies in the traditional sense... I engage in too many activities already through the actions of my characters.
- Alan Dean Foster
So I never spend a lot of time analyzing why people respond to my work. But I think that it's just the joy, a passion for life, that I think has always been in my characters. Beyond that, I'm just grateful for it.
- Michael J Fox
The doctors say it dates back to a film where I had these huge prosthetic breasts because my character was breast-feeding. The weight of them, and of the baby, did my back in.
- Anna Friel
I really fought to make my character not a stereotype. I play a soap star with dyed blonde hair.
- Sadie Frost
I've been killing characters my entire career, maybe I'm just a bloody minded bastard, I don't know, [but] when my characters are in danger, I want you to be afraid to turn the page (and to do that) you need to show right from the beginning that you're playing for keeps.
- George R R Martin
I lost 30 pounds to play my character in 'The Mexican', but people don't take to skinny mafia men, and I don't feel right when I'm thin.
- James Gandolfini
The first thing I read was of my character on the phone talking to Sydney's fiance. Though short, it was so beautifully written, and it made me laugh. I thought if I wanted to play a character, this would be it.
- Victor Garber
Up to that point I never really knew what my character would be expected to do, and prior to accepting the job I had actually turned down the role three times before finally giving in.
- Gil Gerard
I intend all my characters must escape from impossible situations; if they are not in trouble, then as a writer, I am.
- Cleveland W Gibson
The only person who had any control was Jonathan Harris. His character was so flamboyant that he was able to make things happen. My character was fairly one-dimensional, so I had my relationship with Dr. Smith and with the family.
- Mark Goddard
There's a certain way you stand to give yourself authority, which gives you the texture for the part. I chose that my character hadn't been married, he'd worked his way up the chain of command. For a small cameo role, I gave it a lot of thought.
- Mark Goddard
It's nice to play a character that has a soulful, dependent, close relationship. It must mean my character is interesting in some way.
- Jeff Goldblum
The pleasures of being a novelist are many. But the greatest by far is the manner in which I live through my characters; experiencing every detail of their story as it unfolds gradually and personally within my own creative psyche. I'm like a cat with untold lives, because each new book is my rebirth.
- Richelle E Goodrich
I think I'm a part of all the characters I play, definitely at different times in my life. In real life, I'm kind of a tomboy. I like to read a lot I like watching T.V. I don't think I'm as interesting as my characters, but I like doing what I do.
- Sprague Grayden
That's what he was saying, the civil rights movement - judge me for my character, not how black my skin is, not how yellow my skin is, how short I am, how tall or fat or thin; It's by my character.
- Pam Grier
If I were invited to a dinner party with my characters, I wouldn't show up.
- Dr Seuss
Every word I write is like a drop of my blood. If it's flowed passionately and long, I need time to recover from the emotion spent before I began a new story. My characters are my life. I have to respectfully and carefully move between them.
- Red Haircrow
My characters surprise me constantly. My characters are like my friends - I can give them advice, but they don't have to take it. If your characters are real, then they surprise you, just like real people.
- Laurell K Hamilton
There were definitely parts of my character I didn't approve of, and maybe from time to time I had moments when I didn't like myself much. But I got through each day as it came to me, and so far I'd survived every thing life had thrown at me. I could only hope that the survival was worth the price I'd paid.
- Charlaine Harris
I especially object to having my character assassinated by reference to events from my past which bear absolutely no relationship to the question of who the anthrax killer is.
- Steven Hatfill
How I would describe my characters is absolutely different from how I would describe myself.
- Salma Hayek
I also have a film coming up called Breaking Up, and my part in that was not written for a Latina, and my character is not particularly pretty or sexy or exotic.
- Salma Hayek
My character's kind of grown up with Katniss. The beginning of the story, they're more or less brother and sister than anything. They're best friends. They've been keeping each other alive. It's a little frustrating, for the character. As the character, not as me.
- Liam Hemsworth
If we get to shoot the third one, which I'm really hoping we do, the third one's great. There's a big uprising and rebellion, and my character Gale's a big part of that. If we get to shoot that, I'll be very, very pleased.
- Liam Hemsworth
To be honest, I think for part of my late teens my character didn't really develop very much. I was in a state of cold storage.
- Damon Hill
My character had been in the chair for seven years. He had gone through his anger, depression, drug and alcohol abuse. He had gone through everything, now he was up, he was happy, he was filled with his dream.
- Gregory Hines
My characters are fictional. I get ideas from real people, sometimes, but my characters always exist only in my head.
- S E Hinton
My characters are more like men than these real men are, see. They're rough and rude, they got hands and they got bellies. They hate and they lust; break the skin of civilization and you find the ape, roaring and red-handed.
- Robert E Howard
The more I think about myself, the more I'm persuaded that, as a person, I really don't exist. That is one of the reasons why I can't believe in any orthodox religion: I cannot believe in my own soul. No, I am a chemical compound, conditioned by environment and education. My "character" is simply a repertoire of acquired tricks, my conversation a repertoire of adaptations and echoes, my "feelings" are dictated by purely physical, external stimuli.
- Christopher Isherwood
I owe my characters nothing but honesty, and I owe my readers that and a ride worth taking.
- Ryan David Jahn
I always want to know what's wrong with you, why you ain't smiling. That's just my character; I just love people and want to see people having a good time.
- Wyclef Jean
My characters are driven by a passionate desire for justice. They are rebellious and incorruptible.
- Tahar Ben Jelloun
Writing is hard work, and if anything's true about the process, it's that fact that a good story is hard to find and even trickier to get on paper. What's less romantic than staring alone at a blank screen? And edgy? I've changed the cat little because I didn't know what my characters were going to say next.
- Adam Johnson
And from my character's point-of-view in Ravenous, he had been collected by Robert Carlyle's character, he had become infected by this ravenous, cannibalistic power, and he was making the best of it.
- Jeffrey Jones
My job is to help the functioning of the story, not to draw attention to myself, but to make my characters function within the story, to work for the benefit of the story, to make the whole thing work.
- Jeffrey Jones
People say that to me and I think what unites all my characters is that they are hurt; it's most accurate to say I play characters that are hurt but are responding to their environment.
- Ashley Judd
The idea that you might end up in a job that doesn't allow you to be who you are, over the course of a lifetime, is still one of the most chilling nightmares to me. It's a good metaphor for fears I have about losing my soul in some accidental, mundane way. So, to me, these jobs that my characters have are very loaded. They immediately suggest a complex character to me, a woman who is, say, a secretary, but also a vigilante on behalf of her own soul
- Miranda July
I just have my characters say my controversial opinions and then hide behind them.
- Mindy Kaling
I hate a movie that will end by telling you that the first thing you should do is learn to love yourself. That is so insulting and condescending, and so meaningless. My characters don't learn to love each other or themselves.
- Charlie Kaufman
I was in two episodes playing Christopher Reeve's character's emissary. They wanted to have my character announce Dr Swan's death, which I thought was exploitative.
- Margot Kidder
The trick is to try and justify every word on the page and make sure my character is the man who would say that.
- Ben Kingsley
My books are mine, and yet they are alien to me--as a child belongs to a parent and yet has a life of its own. I can guide and hope and nudge my characters this and that way, but in the end, they become what they become. I don't always like what they become myself, but like a parent, there are times when I just don't know what to do about it. Other times when I'm so proud of them I could bust.
- Laura Kinsale
As far as anybody in the rap game ever tryin' to assassinate my character, that's impossible. You talkin' about a man who has always walked the walk and talked the talk.
- Suge Knight
I used to send my characters into a fire that necessarily consumed them, but I have learned, a little, how to send them through the fire to a new place. The characters who do not change most notably Nakota in Cipher, Bibi in Skin, and Lena in Kink are motivated by an essential selfishness or self-centeredness, an unwillingness to relinquish control to the process, a refusal to become.
- Kathe Koja
I can create countries just as I can create the actions of my characters. That is why a lot of travel seems to me a waste of time.
- Jerzy Kosinski
I find it very hard to sit down and create an idea or especially a new character on command. Usually my characters evolve by accident out of some story context.
- John Kricfalusi
My character is somebody who is smaller in stature and yet who's strong, so to see the fighting situations between people who are not generally thought of being strong is in itself unusual and therefore interesting, I think.
- Chiaki Kuriyama
I've learned to let my characters speak and act the way they want to! I've tried to interfere but they just get angry at me and throw big rocks.
- Shandy L Kurth
Over and over I feel as if my characters know who they are, and what happens to them, and where they have been and where they will go, and what they are capable of doing, but they need me to write it down for them because their handwriting is so bad.
- Anne Lamott
I love action films. I'd love to do an action drama. I'm always looking to give my character something action-oriented to do.
- Taylor Lautner
Psychopaths... people who know the differences between right and wrong, but don't give a shit. That's what most of my characters are like.
- Elmore Leonard
Andrew has talked about my character being the conscience of the film, the heart of the film.
- Jared Leto
This was a mutual relationship, mutual on all levels, right from the way it started and all the way through. I don't accept that he had to completely desecrate my character.
- Monica Lewinsky
When one of my characters becomes aware of a magical element, it might be because the world is wider than we assume it to be, but it might also be a reminder to pay attention to what is here already, hidden only because it's been forgotten.
- Charles De Lint
I try to distinguish my characters from each other.
- Lucy Liu
So, it's cool that, yes, Hal Jordan is a superhero, but my character is a real-world hero in her own life.
- Blake Lively
The first night was awful because I was so afraid, and I was never more afraid because it was going out of my character to be outgoing and to be vulnerable and to be out there and onstage. My hands were sweaty and I couldn't swallow, and I drank a bottle of wine to calm my nerves.
- George Lopez
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.
- Wendie Malick
When I'm writing a novel, I'm dealing with a double life. I live in the present at the same time that I live in the past with my characters. It is this that makes a novelist so eccentric and unpleasant.
- John Phillips Marquand
It is one of the defects of my character that I cannot altogether dislike anyone who makes me laugh.
- W Somerset Maugham
There are times when I look over the various parts of my character with perplexity. I recognize that I am made up of several persons and that the person that at the moment has the upper hand will inevitably give place to another. But which is the real one? All of them or none?
- W Somerset Maugham
What I've learned in my life, it's a very interesting social study for me, to go back and forth between being the guy at home and being the guy on the road and being the guy in studio and being the guy in the interview. The environment around you has so much to do with your character, and when I'm home, my character really changes quite a bit.
- John Mayer
I love those preliminary conversations about who a character is. You try on wigs, shoes and clothes. It's preferable when it's not about looking pretty. It can get a little dull to just be cute. We talk about things like, maybe my character can't afford these Christian Louboutins.
- Rachel Mcadams
I remember that it was never that difficult for me to get a director to look up and pay attention to me. Mind you, I don't know if that's necessarily charm. But I've played roles where my character has to be charming and I've found it quite easy to do. I think some of it is in my bones, but some of it is more deliberate.
- James Mcavoy
I kind of embarked on a fruitless search to find information about my character, Frederick Aiken. And it was fruitless, unfortunately, because there's so little about him.
- James Mcavoy
We've still got a long haul ahead of is and I don't want to damn her rift away with my first, second, and third impressions, as my character analyses are usually for shit.
- Megan Mccafferty
For me it's even more interesting, because my character comes out of the shadow. It's a chance to really act emotionally, because the situation is an extreme one.
- Ian Mcdiarmid
Most of the time when I receive a script, it says something like 'Rosenberg is the fat, slovenly Mayor, who doesn't want the kids to use the skateboard park', or 'Stein is a pompous, rotund attorney, imposing to all.' It would be so freeing to get a script where my character is simply described as 'A Man'.
- Fred Melamed
My character is not flawless.
- Breckin Meyer
You can't have virtue without sin. What I'm after is having my characters' virtues defined by how they operate in a very sinful environment. That's how you test people.
- Frank Miller
My character in 'Prison Break' needs to be formidable. In reality, I'm not very tough at all.
- Wentworth Miller
I was always cutting dialogue out when we were rehearsing, and when I produced movies, too. I felt that people don't say things in life - they act, they do things. I always wanted my characters doing, rather than saying what they were doing - which was redundant.
- Donna Mills
My characters have undergone the same process of simplification as the colors. Now that they have been simplified, they appear more human and alive than if they had been represented in all their details.
- Joan Miro
I liked the way my character, Shane, was first introduced. You get introduced to her through this sexual action, and I thought that was so cool and just kind of summed up what she enjoys and who she is, to a certain extent. She's a complete sexual being and the great thing is that she doesn't apologize for it. It's just who she is. We rarely see women be able to do that on television.
- Katherine Moennig
If I take care of my character, my reputation will take care of me.
- Dwight L Moody
And a lesson in this movie is dig beneath the surface. And so with my words, with my character, I purposely created a character that was away from how you've known me thus far in my career.
- Shemar Moore
My character Esteban is a guy who really didn't think he was gonna be there at this point in his life. He's in his early 30s. He's got a son. He's raising his son as a single father.
- Esai Morales
I gradually work myself into a frenzy as the shoot approaches, while we're choosing the costumes or working with the make-up artist. I'm not so much interested in my character as the film itself.
- Jeanne Moreau
I was a Sedgewick without the smarts. It infused its way into me and I feel like it formed my character in a big way because of what I was exposed to.
- Rob Morrow
My character in 'Shame' is an outrageous person. Loud and uncompromising and I begged Steve McQueen to give me the job.
- Carey Mulligan
In the original script, my character was a basketball player rather than a boxer. I didn't think I could pull that off. I'm a little short to be a basketball player!
- Eddie Murphy
My knowledge of Mr. Forster's works is limited to one novel which I dislike; and anyway it was not he who fathered that trite little whimsy about characters getting out of hand; it is as old as the quills, although of course one sympathizes with his people if they try to wriggle out of that trip to India or whereever he takes them. My characters are galley slaves.
- Vladimir Nabokov
In terms of the frustration of my character, I suppose any teenager has probably gone through that, in terms of telling their parents, I want to do one thing, and their parent says no. I think parents sometimes forget that they were children.
- Parminder Nagra
I'm not the kind of actor that would know what my character had for breakfast last Tuesday.
- Liam Neeson
My character and good name are in my own keeping. Life with disgrace is dreadful. A glorious death is to be envied.
- Horatio Nelson
I think a lot of people relate to some of my characters' inner struggles.
- Edward Norton
Well, I don't feel that I've played so many bad guys, and I'm rot really drawn to villains per se. I think a lot of people relate to some of my characters' inner struggles.
- Edward Norton
I think that's what I really liked about Narc: My character has a real operatic range in a way that older movies used to have.
- Jason Patric
I've been doing this 17 years but I can tell you I have more websites now than I have ever had devoted to me or my past career or my character. When I got this show, I think I had two fans out there that had created websites on my behalf.
- Robert Patrick
Well, my mom is single and we've both been single at the same time over the last ten years, so I really related to the bond between my character and Diane's.
- Amanda Peet
You have very accurately described the difficulty of presenting my books on film: many of my characters are alone most of the time, and when they do talk, what they say is mostly lies. That can make for a pretty confusing film.
- Thomas Perry
As I entered this world, I would leave behind the nurturing of my family and my home, but in another sense I would take their protection with me. The lessons I had learned, the feelings of groundedness and belonging that have been woven into my character there, would be my companions on the journey.
- Sidney Poitier
I approach my character with the question: What would an animal think? How would an animal respond? A lot of times, it's quick action and no fear, and sometimes it's irrational fear. You don't always know.
- Victoria Pratt
I don't need all that much - I just need to know who my characters are and what kind of jam they're going to get into, and I'll write myself out of their jam.
- Richard Price
The interesting thing about my character Sylar is that my strengths as an actor seemed to go completely against the shape of a character in the shadow.
- Zachary Quinto
I will stipulate to having both French sea salt and a big bottle of extra virgin in my kitchen. And while the presence of both might go some small distance in pigeonholing me demographically, neither one of them makes me a good person. They are mute and useless indicators of the content of my character.
- David Rakoff
How would I behave in a situation that caused me to summon the essence of my character? The tragedy inspired me to test myself. I wanted to reveal to myself who I was: the kind of person who died, or the kind of person who overcame circumstances to help himself and others
- Aron Ralston
My characters aren't losers. They're rebels. They win by their refusal to play by everyone else's rules.
- Harold Ramis
I don't think my spirituality has affected my character. I feel like my character is much more cynical about his beliefs, and I think I have to kind of drop what I believe in order to play him.
- Jason Ritter
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