Character Study Quotes

I'm interested in writing that explores all sides of human beings.

Badlapur' is a drama, a character-driven story. It is not so much about plot.

I'm interested in the human more than I'm interested in building suspense.

When I research a role it does get a little crazy and maybe even a little stupid.

Mr. [Judah P.] Benjamin, unquestionably, will have great influence with the President [Jefferson Davis], for he has studied his character most carefully. He will be familiar not only with his "likes" but especially his "dislikes.

There's a potter that lived back in the 1800s, in Biloxi, Mississippi, and his name was George Ohr. He was of Russian descent, but they called him the "Mad Potter of Biloxi." I'd love to do a great character study and comedy about that guy's life. That would be my dream role. I know it's an oddball thing, but it's true. He lived at the turn of the century, in the 1800s.

One of the most important keys to acting is curiosity. I am curious to the point of being nosy. What that means is you want to devour lives. You're eager to put on their shoes and wear their clothes and have them become a part of you. All people contain mystery, and when you act, you want to plumb that mystery until everything is known to you.

I'm a better person when I'm preparing for a role, when I'm studying a role.

I've always wanted to do a role based on a real-life person.

I use photos a lot for drawing people and personalities, but they're almost never photos that I've taken.

I don't call myself a method actor, but the thing is, when you meet Reynolds Woodcock, who is always Reynolds Woodcock, you kind of are Alma, and you kind of become Alma all the time. I think after the first day, Vicky was going, 'Oh gosh.' It was so intense, and I couldn't understand why it was so intense.

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.

I'll write about myself, or people I know, or archetypal characters, but the goal is to get at some truth, not to necessarily convey my own experience as an individual to the world.

Kafka is not interested in documenting the manners and mores of any particular place; he is not interested in probing the psyche of individual characters.

I do this because I'm an observer of people. That's why I want to be an actor. I'm fascinated by human beings and the circumstances they find themselves in.

It is open to question whether the highly individualized characters we find in Shakespeare are perhaps not detrimental to the dramatic effect. The human being disappears to the same degree as the individual emerges.

Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may be detailed with the most minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time. He must study events in their bearings near and remote; in the character, habits, and manners of those who took part in them. He must himself be, as it were, a sharer or a spectator of the action he describes.

For me, when I'm making a movie I like to stay in character throughout the day.

And I think when you're playing someone who is a real person, it's extremely important to take the time and put in the effort to learn about who they are to be able to respectfully portray that.

I didn't set out to be a Trump impressionist at all. It wasn't that I wanted to be Trump. It's that I was asking, 'What if Trump was me?'

When you go for something because you're curious about it, you get psyched up about the chance of getting into it. It's like an actor meets a role, and you slip into that body and see what happens, to experience certain conditions, to adopt a certain character. Even shooting is a study of the character. I think both the character and the actor, and eventually the filmmaker - myself - are finding a way to accept their environment and being accepted and feel comfortable of themselves.

The character of Cable is complex.

I think the novel, its business is the investigation of human nature.

There's the acting side of it so you work with a coach. Dissect a script. If it's a character, then obviously a character study. Just depends on if there is training needed.

What attracted me to Jimmy Bulger were the various facets of his personality and his humanity because I felt that the only way I could approach playing a character like him was to find his human side first and then map that out to see where it took the turn. He was a very complicated man.