Charlie Murphy Quotes

I love the powerful woman who's complicated. There's no push to be one thing or another thing. It's all human. That's what you look for as an actor: characters written and portrayed in the most human way possible.

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.

I don't want to walk in the middle. I want people to read what I write and feel strongly about it. If, at some point, whatever I am doing is failing to elicit a response, whether it's very positive or very negative, then I am going to stop doing it.

If you start to disrespect the character you're playing, or play it too much for laughs, that can work for a sketch, it will sell some gags, but it's all technique. It's like watching a juggler - you can be impressed by it, but it's not going to touch you in any way.

On stage, it is a tremendous thing to be able to make people laugh. But one of the things that I have always loved is when I am in shows where you can turn the audience upside down and make them cry or move them. That is when things are the most rewarding.

Part of my strength as an actor comes from what I've learned all these years: when you play a villain, you try to get the light touches; when you play a hero, you try to get in some of the warts.

Positive characterizations are complex characterizations. That's all we need to know. They shouldn't be saccharine. They shouldn't feel like medicine.

Everything's complicated, even those things that seem flat in their bleakness or sadness.

I like characters who are contradictory.

There's more depth to Lionel. What I am finding so interesting about playing him is there's all these different layers. I prefer playing Lionel because he's a human being.

I've been trying to take this journey over the last four years of getting away from playing manipulative and villainous characters and playing characters that are affected by what happens to them as opposed to unaffected.

As first and foremost a character actor, I've always resisted the temptation to cure any of the people I've played or make them lovable in any way; you've just got to celebrate them for what they are.

Whether it's a very dramatic part or a comical role, I feel I need to create the same thing: a full-fledged, three-dimensional character that the audience can identify with.

I'm always just drawn to those roles that present one way and have many other things going on underneath. It's just more fun to play as an actor.

The most important thing is to illicit some reaction, good or bad. If some people are repellent to me, so be it. If some people are attracted to me, great. At the end, that's the object of entertainment - you want to provoke a reaction.

If you're going to play human beings, and you're going to play them three-dimensionally, you have to show every side of them.

People are more than two-dimensional, and again I think the complexities in life, and in one's makeup, grow as you get older, partly through experience.

I didn't like characters that were one- or two-dimensional. I liked a guy to have a lot of different levels to him and layers, and I think I pretty well succeeded with Thanos.

People have cried at a couple of shows. To think that someone could do that for me... Jesus Christ. That's a crazy sign.

I always respond to characters who have depth. I'm always interested in those people. They're the ones who surprise you.

I discovered that my drag really does speak to people on an emotional level. I also discovered that people are sometimes put off by an intellectual approach to drag.

What can I say? I'm a complicated guy.

I want to entertain, but I'm interested in a whole range of feelings.

With my work, I always want to people to just forget about anything stressful going on in their lives and be fully entertained. Laughter is key. If they shed a tear or go home thinking about the play, that's a bonus.

I would far rather add a character who generates strong feelings than someone who just kind of floats along, generating medium-warmth smiles of gentle affirmation.