Nelsan Ellis Quotes

It's one thing to play a character that's fictitious - it's quite another to play somebody that is alive and well.

I can honestly say I've never thought for a second about whether a character reflects poorly on any group. All that matters to me is that the character is true to my belief in who he or she is.

I think, first of all, every time you want to play somebody who is real is always challenging and always scary, because you are given a responsibility of someone's real life.

I sort of challenge people's perceptions of what a gay man is, which is kinda good.

I certainly would never presume to play another race of a person. Diversity is important in Hollywood, and I would never want to feel like I was playing a character that was offensive.

When I play a gay character, I want to be as believable as possible. And when I'm playing a straight character, I also want to be as believable as possible. So the less that people know about my personal life, the more believable I can be as a character.

In Hollywood, there is one dominant voice. It is a white, male, straight gaze. When I talk about positive portrayals of black people and women, I'm saying complexity. I'm not saying goody-two-shoes, everything's okay. No. The positive view of me is to see me as I am: the 'good,' the 'bad,' the gray. That is a positive portrayal.

You never want to just be outrageous for outrageous' sake 'cause then it doesn't work, and it's not believable. You want to be as true to whatever character you're playing.

There is a very thin line dividing characterisation from impersonation. I've to make sure I don't cross over into mimicry.

I don't want to put on any gimmicky layers just to give the character more definition. I just want to play good characters. It doesn't matter to me if it's 'open ethnicity' or 'specifically Asian.'

I think every role you take on, you should take on the responsibility of doing the best representation of that person or that character or that role. When it is a human being that has actually existed, and it is a person that people know of, yeah, you feel an even more amount of pressure to do a good job.

You want to try and bring a character to life in an honest a way as you possibly can. It doesn't matter whether he's a doctor, an actor, a car salesman or a captain of a starship. If you can bring truth and honesty to that character, then your audience will believe you.

I do fairly represent Middle Eastern women.

Every part I play is just a variant of my own personality. No real character actor, of course, just me.

Just because you are out doesn't make you the poster boy for the gay community.

There's no such thing as a perfect person, so it makes no sense to write a perfect person. I don't know any author who'd try. And we write characters, not representations of groups.

As an actor, the biggest compliment you can get, in my book is for someone to believe that you're the character.

There are so few representations of women that look remotely real in scripted television.

There are a lot of gay people in fashion, but it's not as if every gay person is a great creator.

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.

A straight writer can write a gay novel and not worry about it, and a gay novelist can write about straight people.

That's, to me, the ultimate goal - to disappear inside another character and bring them so fully to life that I've convinced other human beings that it's a real person.

I'm not a writer; I'm an actor. My job is to take whatever character I'm given and - especially because I have the responsibility of being a black actress, and I know young black girls are looking up, and everyone's looking to what's on television - to just try to give whatever character I'm playing as three-dimensional a portrayal as I can.

I'm not sure sometimes if it was because Will was gay or it was a sitcom. But that combination does make it hard to become the new lead on the 'Sopranos.'

I've played several real characters, and I've always found it very difficult because you don't want to do an impersonation.