Tony Todd Quotes

Every time when I start preparing my character for a movie, I always try to make up and create my own background story for the role in order to fill it with life.

I mean, can I really create a full, three-dimensional character? I don't know anymore. I'm certainly going to try.

What I mostly do is take the script, analyse the hell out of it, see what's in there, see what kind of person I'm dealing with, and then forget I'm playing a father and just play a person who exemplifies all those things.

There are always practical decisions to be made about any character you're playing.

Basically, the way you get into any role is just doing research on the type of character you're playing.

I do build my own backstory as an actor. It's important to know where your characters have come from in order to know where they're going - in order to exist in that state of being.

I don't approach a role by saying I'll be unsavory or unlikable.

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 like to prepare for my roles well, so you can call me a method actor to an extent.

My acting style changes according to the way a character is imagined.

In 'There Will Be Blood,' my character was someone who was an actor himself almost. He had a rehearsed quality about him. He was a performance artist in a way.

When you start out on a project as an actor, you know, you approach the character from the standpoint of maybe writing a list - even if it's a mental list that you make - of the adjectives that the character has or that character possesses.

I had an acting teacher tell me once that if you're playing a car salesman, you don't want to be an OK car salesman, you want to play the best car salesman.

I had to focus and create a character in Bagger Vance, not just do my 'Will Smith' thing and get paid.

My mentor Jon Simmons introduced me to the Stanislavski system, which is so heavy on back-story. So you write and write and write these back stories about a character and then you throw it away. So then on set, if it doesn't come, then you didn't do your work.

When I get a role, I try to delve as deeply as possible into the character.

I don't really prepare for each role the same way.

Well, you know, with every character, if you're going to expose yourself, you've got to figure out every detail that you're going to play. So there's no character that you can just go put on his shirt and be fully prepared.

I do write long, long character notes - family background, history, details of appearance - much more than will ever appear in the novel. I think this is what lifts a book from that early calculated, artificial stage.

Acting is kind of difficult to intellectualize - it's a far more visceral experience. It's really hard to be able to think about and then employ these kind of esoteric notions of this person's backstory and try to weave it in somehow. It's just kind of impossible.

I'm not a method actor, but I'm a big research kind of actor.

There are a lot of actors who will sit here and talk to you about characters - 'He does this, and she's a really interesting character because she does this.' I'm not like that at all. I'm not an actory actor.

In many ways, acting is really like a science to me to figure out the human behavior of any character that I'm playing.

I think as an actress, I prefer having a character on the page. It allows you to be more invested in actually creating a whole person. It's easier when you're not trying to come up with your next line on the spot.

Part of an actor's job is to find correlations between your own life and the life of the person you are playing.