Cillian Murphy Quotes

I don't think the challenge is asking an audience to like a character; it's inviting them to try and understand them... then making that journey entertaining and worth their while. It's a classic trick, but it's human, and it allows characters to have more depth.

That's what frees up an actor: when you don't have to be responsible to likability.

I've played a different type of character in a different type of thing, for the most part. It's not like you can't mine tons of fascinating stuff from any character that you play, and I've always been fascinated with women and relationships, but this has been a completely different experience, for sure.

I've done a number of films. I've been around this. I think the biggest challenge is just getting the script right, the way that you want the script to be. It's really about capturing the complexity of emotions and creating the kind of characters that people will want to watch every week.

I'm such a huge fan of television and what's happening in television, right now. You are able to visit characters and visit a story, week to week, push things in a different way than you can in a film, and you are able to go deeper, simply because you have more time. I'm just excited to do that. It's always good to do new things.

With each movie [Twilight saga], we went in trying to explore that character a little deeper, or in a different sense. But, at the same time, there was a comfort in knowing that you know this person.

I love playing characters that go to extreme places, and I love to explore different kinds of psychological landscapes, so it is ultimately a kind of fun, but it's also complicated and colored by the depth of the nastiness of it, at certain times, as well.

I think we dip in and out of it. Every new show is trying to find their feet before they can say what they are. That's certainly something that I like about the role - going in and out of the personal life. There are some episodes where we go into it a little more, and some where we don't at all

Television series always have a lot of characters because you want people to identify with someone on the show, who will be your eyes.

The other main difference between film and television is that you have the opportunity to flush out a character, over a longer period of time. Whereas with a film, you're confined to two or three hours, or whatever it may be.

In a great horror movie, you've gotta have some character development and you've gotta set some of your people up and you've gotta have a little back story going. You've gotta take that time for exposition.

The best writers are gravitating to that world. What's rewarding also is this: you have a two hour movie, you can't really delve into character that much. In a TV show you can. You can delve into character. You can get into nitty gritty.

Get to know your characters as well as you can let there be something at stake, and then let the chips fall where they may.

The writer can only explore the inner space of his characters by perceptively navigating his own.

I try to keep my characters raising more questions than giving answers. I don't want to leave too much on the table. I want you to have your connection and your secret understanding of the character.

Character, I think, is the single most important thing in fiction. You might read a book once for its interesting plot—but not twice.

I've never really been a fan of violence. I'm more into the characters and their journey and those kinds of movies don't really allow for that. It's a different focus.

Until a character becomes a personality it cannot be believed. Without personality, the character may do funny or interesting things, but unless people are able to identify themselves with the character, its actions will seem unreal. And without personality, a story cannot ring true to the audience.

I don't want to do action that doesn't mean anything. Everything I do I want to have character development and three-dimensional characters, fallible humans, and this is definitely one of them.

American movie audiences now just don’t seem to be very interested in any kind of ambiguity or any kind of real complexity of character or narrative - I’m talking in large numbers, there are always some, but enough to make hits out of movies that have those qualities. I think those qualities are now being seen on television and that people who want to see stories that have those kinds of qualities are watching television.

One of the great things about TV is the story to tell can be very internal and really character-based.

My characters, I find them as I'm writing. It's quite incredible how fully realized they are in my mind, how many details I know about each of them.

I stay true, because whatever the project is, I'm still looking for inside of that character.

I think that television has become really, really interesting, in terms of character development. You can have 13 hours to develop a character, as opposed to 25 minutes in a movie. That excites me.

Trying to find a human side to the character is a way to give them a chance to have people like them.