Ed Helms Quotes

The secret to comedy is not playing the comedy, but actually playing the situation, playing the drama of it.

Doing drama is a very welcome departure from comedy. Although I love doing both, I like to change it up a bit once in a while with roles in serious drama.

You're not just looking for laughs, but you're trying to do the characters first, and then the laughs come afterwards.

I'll never approach a part in the same way again. Piaf taught me so much. In terms of my work, I think I'll enjoy it even more than before, because now I know that characters truly exist in their own right. I'll have a way to bring them even more intensely to life.

I don't really tell a joke, I react to situations. The whole thing is just looking at somebody and showing all our weaknesses and exaggerating them, and that's how it becomes funny.

You don't have to kill somebody to play a murderer. You have to read the script and interpret the character.

When you're doing comedy, you're not trying to be funny. I think things are funny when the character is taking it totally seriously. I think when people are winking, it becomes slapstick, it becomes something else.

For me, a lot of the humor comes not from innocence but from characters trying to figure out how to get what they need. I don't try to be funny, but am relieved when an opportunity comes up for humor.

I approach everything the same. I try to make it as real as possible, whether you gotta make people laugh or make people cry, it's always the same approach for me. But if I start doing pratfalls, somebody please pull the plug on me.

I let the comedy come through the character and just try to make sure that everything is kind of rounded in a truth, in a reality, because that's what I need to make a character work.

I feel like with comedy, the crazy things that happen are never serious you know? Like, rubble being poured onto you in drama would be something that's absolutely terrible, but in a comedy it's absolutely terrible but so funny.

In my own work, humor is necessary, for the reasons stated above, but also because forbidding your characters silliness, absurdity, irony, and vulgarity forbids them aspects of the human experience every bit as universal as sorrow.

It's a very important skill set for an actor to be able to bring the humor into any moment, whether you're doing drama or comedy.

I think a lot of that is what helped me develop my character. I wouldn't say it was Method, but it was definitely a little more in depth than I've done before in terms of acting. With the other kids, we all were such good friends by the time we started shooting. Because of that, it allowed us to trust each other more to push the dynamics of the relationship to places which you might not be able to had you not trusted that person.

With all of the characters I've played, I feel like I've tried to communicate through my eyes and face, as much or more than with words. That's something that I like to watch in films, and something that I like to bring to the characters that I play.

It's much simpler to be tortured on camera or to be filmed losing your mind. Whereas a script that has characters who are honest, witty and genuine is often much harder to act.

I don't see any difference in the craft of acting, in film or television. It's absolutely the same. It's different storytelling, playing a character over multiple hours, as opposed to two.

And the bigger the fall, the bigger the joke. It would be better fun to throw a custard pie at a bishop than at a curate.

There's obviously some appeal in scenes for me - there's something I respond to. I keep doing those films where I put myself out there like that. I guess I look for those kinds of moments and I pride myself on being an actor who will do just about anything for a laugh - so long as it's within context of the scene in the movie and it's not gratuitous. I have to feel it'll make people laugh.

The point of acting is to hide yourself and get lost in character. To play the same character in eighteen movies would be defeating the purpose I believe so I try to keep a little bit of diversity.

Every role is approached in exactly the same way, you have to make it believable and that's all. Acting is really serious, like, pretending really hard.

Playing on stereotypes was meant to be humorous. If it doesn't tickle you in certain spots, it's not going to be funny. Falling down the stairs is a seriously dangerous thing, but watching it is HILARIOUS!

When you're playing a character who's cruel, look for the places where he's kind. When you're playing a character who is unhappy, look for the places where he has a glint of merriment.

The more serious the situation, the funnier the comedy can be. The greatest comedy plays against the greatest tragedy. Comedy is a red rubber ball and if you throw it against a soft, funny wall, it will not come back. But if you throw it against the hard wall of ultimate reality, it will bounce back and be very lively. Very, very few people understand this.

My persona is most importantly just to communicate the material in a way that is most funny and meaningful in the moment. It's more like a character that's sculpted for whatever joke needs communicating at the moment.