Jack Lowden Quotes

As an actor, it's really exciting and challenging to play a character which is much older than your actual age.

I'd always wanted to do costume drama, but period dramas often become very wooden. Just because they're born in the 1400s, all of a sudden people start losing their sense of humour or their personalities.

It was interesting to portray a character that was so far removed from today's world, but was also at the forefront of feminism at that time.

You're in a very nice position as an actor when you're portraying a piece of history that actually happened and portraying characters that actually existed. There's so much more to draw on and your research as an actor becomes much easier than if it's some fiction that you're trying to create a world around and background and history.

I'm pretty far from the character I play, so it's fun to mess around and be a 15-year-old again.

I turn 30 next month, and in my 20s, I've been in this limbo of being too old to play the young lead, and too young to play the 30, 35 - year - old. I've always had an older head on my shoulders because I've hung out with older people. I was in television shows with older actors, and when I was 15, 16, 17, I sat up in hotel lobby bars with older actors until the early hours of the morning hearing them tell stories. I've always been drawn to older characters and I've always struggled to get into the younger roles. It feels good to be finally getting to an age where I'm playing my age.

I would love to do a period piece. That would be really cool. And also like to do something transformative and have to transform yourself physically to become that character. Any interesting, fun roles, I'm attracted to.

From my point of view, when I was thinking about the prospect of [Michael Douglas] in this part, I wondered if he would go all the way with it. The reason I was concerned is that, oftentimes, actors - especially movie stars - when they're playing a character who might be perceived as unattractive or eccentric, will wink at the audience while they're doing it.

I assume most of the characters I play are exactly like me.

I was happy that I finally could play a mature woman, because I started working when I was a teenager and was always playing characters according to my age.

When you play a character, you bring yourself into the character. You get a chance to shine and show your translation for the character and her state of mind.

The wonderful thing about Crystal in Mr. Sunshine is that she doesn't have any boundaries. She's not aware socially of what's correct and incorrect. Crystal's probably the craziest character I've ever had to do and the furthest I've gone, with the only exception being Away We Go - I was pretty big in that.

The great difficulty is first to win a reputation; the next to keep it while you live; and the next to preserve it after you die, when affection and interest are over, and nothing but sterling excellence can preserve your name. Never suffer youth to be an excuse for inadequacy, nor age and fame to be an excuse for indolence.

I don't smoke weed on set all day. I just want to say that, you know, not all day. After lunch you get tired. What can you do? To me, the fact that a character smokes weed isn't really what I hang my hat on necessarily.

There is a slow-growing beauty which only comes to perfection in old age.... I have seen sweeter smiles on a lip of seventy than I ever saw on a lip of seventeen. There is the beauty of youth, and there is also the beauty of holiness—a beauty much more seldom met; and more frequently found in the arm-chair by the fire, with grandchildren around its knee, than in the ball-room or the promenade.

A lot of times, in film and TV, they just want you to play yourself. But, when you're someone who's more of a character actor, you get to experience what it feels like to play a bunch of different kinds of people. I find it more invigorating than challenging. I definitely trust the writers to give me the material that I will take and turn into the person that I'm playing.

With every character you play you're always trying to put facets of yourself into those characters. I think Asher, at the beginning of The Giver, when he's goofy and a little bit of a rule-breaker, a little bit of a jokester, I align with him. But then he kind of transforms throughout the movie and becomes someone I don't necessarily relate to. I relate to Adam McCormick's sensitivity. He's more quiet and introverted, and I definitely have those moments as well.

The only form of fiction in which real characters do not seem out of place is history. In novels they are detestable.

Any time you get a chance to play a great role, I consider all the qualities I may or may not have attributed to that character and how I would fit into the story.

I'm just really old [in Doctor Strange]. Just really, really old. There is I suppose a sort of theme tune which I'm really interested in.

One of the many troubles of growing older is that it gets progressively harder to find a famous historical figure who hadn't yet amounted to anything by the time he was your age.

Each role you play, they set a bar of challenges that you meet. And in the past, I've played characters that emotionally expressed themselves a bit more in a physical way. It was a joy, actually.

Sometimes your characters in films do things that you wouldn't do. You're not playing yourself all the time.

After Blood Simple, everybody thought I was from Texas. After Mississippi Burning, everybody thought I was from Mississippi and uneducated. After Fargo, everybody's going to think I'm from Minnesota, pregnant, and have blonde hair. I don't think you can ever completely transform yourself on film, but if you do your job well, you can make people believe that you're the character you're trying to be.

I'm hesitant to do leading man character roles because I think they can be a little boring in terms of needing to be the everyman who navigates the amazing stuff around them.