Embodying a Role Quotes

Be the person you wish to become - today. Talk like them, walk like them, breathe like them! Be them NOW!

[Role of Dr.Strange] gives me an excuse as an actor to be learning with my character, which is something you can do authentically - I'm not a martial arts expert, I'm certainly no sorcerer, so all these things, the movement of the body, the physicality, the changes he goes through mentally and physically, obviously we're not shooting in sequence, but it's a great part.

I love having played Walter because I suppose any actor brings a certain aspect of their own personality to their work, and I had a fairly broad canvas to paint on with the different versions.

I don't pretend to be the character. I am the character.

As an actor, you never really set out to be a stand-out character. You just want to do justice to the story and enjoy playing it, and find all the different nooks and crannies of who someone is. For each part that you get, they're all special and you just try to give everything you can to each one. I don't know whether they're going to be stand out in that way or not factors into my work. They all stand out for me.

I admire the actors that truly can impersonate someone - become someone, inhabit someone. It's amazing when you see it done.

I just try to be honest and true to the character and play the part.

I think I'm a better actor now. I mean, I really think I know a lot about acting now. But I didn't know a lot about acting then, in 80's, and I never knew how to be myself. I never knew how to relax and just play it from me. I was always trying to deliver a line.

In the movie, you have to decide as an actor how you are going to give a character presence. You can't really move, walk, and talk like yourself. This creates something so you have to find something "other".

I don't think of an actor. I think in the character, and then I search for the actor. Usually I'm thinking without names, because they will change my idea. No big egos. If I want egos - just mine. That is enough.

When you play somebody's life, everything about your likeness, everything about the way you talk, whatever, has to become that person.

In fact, when they wake up in the morning, they're Jack Nicholson or Robert De Niro or Josh Brolin. And it's built-in, but they think it's all this other stuff. But it's not. They'd be great if they didn't think about their part or if they did think about it.

If I was an actor, it would be like a part that was me. It has to be real to me. I have to make it mine. I really enjoy taking a song I feel that way about, and sometimes it can take a long time to come up with just the right touch. I think that's really my greatest talent, interpreting.

If I was playing Carrie, I might have done differently but I felt like as my character. I mean, I'm definitely bringing myself to the role but I wanted to pay homage. I hope I did. We'll see.

I think the best models are actors, you're taking on a character. In that sense, I have been acting for a long time. It didn't seem like a crazy transition. Acting is a bigger step into modelling in a way. Modelling is easier when you don't look like yourself. When you look like a different person, you feel different. Acting goes deeper into that, you have to move and talk like that character. I love it.

T I was doing Predators, this new movie for FOX simultaneously, and this character that I play in the movie is "Walter Stands," and I had a plethora of ink all up and down my skin.Once you have ink on your body, how it informs you as an actor, and you kind of get in that space and occupy that space of that character, when you're without them, when I'm just Walton Goggins in the world and I'm without my tattoos, I feel a little naked.

When becoming a character, you have to steal. Steal whatever you see. You can even steal from other actors' characterizations; but if you do, only steal from the best.

When people embrace character, it informs their living, breathing moments in a scene so well.

As an actor in the theater you're taught that you never play a bad guy. You have to love who you are. You can't say, "Oh, I'm a bad guy." How do you play that?

As most characters are that I play, there's a lot of me in it, anyway.

As an actor, I've learned to become a detective. You have to figure out who that person is. If the character is a thief, you have to figure out what makes them a thief. Whatever the prevailing idiosyncrasy is, I have to find it in the script.

I actually like character work, so for me, generally speaking, I enjoy it. It's a little bit more of a comfortable suit you put back on. You can explore it and have fun with it and push the limits of it.

When it comes to acting, it's about creating a character and bringing forth a director's vision. It's a weird feeling, because with acting, it's just not about me. I love being in that position, because with the music, it's always about me.

It's fun to act, but for me, it's more fun to actually create the character and act it out knowing that I know everything about this character. That's more fun to me than just reading lines.

There was this book that Judi Dench wrote that said there was a moment where, before an actor can be this or be that, the actor must simply be. I thought that to have absolute presence was to absorb everything that’s thrown at you.