Mekhi Phifer Quotes

I'm the guy who plays human beings. I understand why the characters are doing what they're doing. When you play a villain, you don't play a villain: you play a human being doing what he thinks he needs to do to get what he wants.

I never play a villain that I don't have something I can either do or say so the audience sees there is something redeemable about them. In other words, I don't want to do evil for evil's sake. I don't want to do Jason slasher movies. There's no point in that.

Even if I'm playing a bad guy, I work hard to make him multi-leveled and interesting.

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.

As an actor, I'm constantly striving to find the darkness in the lighter characters and the lightness in the darker characters.

You can't think that you're playing a villain, or you'll end up with a cartoon. You have to think about him as a person and a hero.

I think the idea is to try and understand everything about the characters and where the character is coming from, from their point of view, why they say what they do. And not, 'Oh, but I would never say that. Why does the character say that?' But then making it as personal as possible.

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.

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.

You don't play villains like they are villains. You play them like you know exactly where they are coming from. Which hopefully you do.

I can play a man who's despicable. But I'll still look inside him to find a point of connection. If I can find that kernel, audiences will relate to me.

I think any role you need to play not so much transforms but I like to think of it as understanding the psychology of another character.

When I look at a character, whether he's good or bad, one scene or 10 scenes, I just have to find my way in.

An actor knows much more about a character than the character knows about himself.

I get a lot of people saying to me, 'Oh, you're the actor who plays the nutters,' and I'm not. I'm the guy who plays human beings. I understand why the characters are doing what they're doing. When you play a villain, you don't play a villain: you play a human being doing what he thinks he needs to do to get what he wants.

Being a good actor is sort of understanding the complexity of the human psyche and also knowing that we are none of us perfect.

I always approach any character I do as being right.

I think that I identify with my role in pretty much everything I have tried to do. I try to find something that I can understand about each character's behavior.

As an actor, you have to find reasons why your character made her decisions, and you have to empathise with her.

After a while, the person who knows the character best is you, the actor.

I don't have any special approach for playing dark characters. That's because I never looked at them as dark characters per se. For me, they were real people.

If you never fall in love with your character, you'll never be able to do that character justice. No matter who it is, no matter what the character does, you have to find the reason for it. Everyone's got a reason for what they do, even if it's a reason that they're not proud of.

Any character you play, you're on his side. You do have the third eye that looks at what an appalling creature he is, but you have to look at what's good about him.

As an actor, you are always looking for subtext, for layers, for what's going on underneath.

If there is a reason I'm able to make unsympathetic characters human, it's because it's my desire to find what drives the unsympathetic behavior. Almost always at the bottom of it is some deep insecurity. Putting your finger on what each individual's particular insecurity is goes a long way to fleshing that person out.