Nuanced Performance Quotes

Sometimes you're watching a great film actor, and if you stand 10 feet away from them, you're like, 'God, they're terrible. They're not doing anything.' And then you see the close-up, and it's so nuanced, and so much expression is happening. They were acting for that camera and for no one else.

I'm attracted to playing people who aren't necessarily straightforward.

I want to play a character with grey shades.

I did this movie right after it about the life of Chet Baker. It's called Born to Be Blue. In that situation, there's a real clear character you're drawing on. It's a real person. It's really exciting and interesting to do the research to figure out how to make that a nuanced, three-dimensional human being.

I never try and play a bad guy to be bad and to be brutal and to be nasty and vicious, because I think you're going to be very cliche there. You know, you've got to find the truth in that character and what he believes in. It just happens that, you know, he's wrong.

I want roles without anger and feistiness. I want to show weakness and sadness, some love, some happiness.

It's easier to play aggression and malevolence onscreen, often, than to hit softer notes.

Playing normal is hard; especially playing normal that's not you. The biggest challenge in playing Alicia is trying to make a teenage girl seem fully formed and not the quintessential moody teenager with a quippy, sassy line here and there.

I don't have any complex plans for playing a character. I think all I try to do is not make too many bad guy faces and not ever try to seem too good. I just try to put it in the middle somewhere.

No actor can play a villain if they don't sympathise with him or her - otherwise the character just becomes a two-dimensional caricature.

Well, I think one of the main things that you have to think about when acting in the movies is to try not to make the acting show.

I'm usually sort of ambiguous in terms of whether I'm playing a good person or a bad person. I can walk that line of funny but also dark, and I'm happy doing that.

I really want my acting to be definitive a lot of times, but I must feel like in any given moment there is a lot of things going on with Rose. I kept telling Denzel [Washington] throughout filming [Fences] that the house is her joy and her tomb.

I think any time anybody sees the bad guy show emotion and you're not hitting the audience over the head, there's always a tinge of empathy for that individual.

You're not free unless you can show the good and the bad, all sides of them. So to me, when I play a character, it's important that I can show every aspect of them.

I'd like to be taken in charge of as an actor, not to be abandoned with asinine dialogue and meaningless actions or stereotyped characters. I'd like to feel like I'm in a character driven story.

In 'Yours Truly,' I was the centre of the story; I was the protagonist. There was a lot more happening inside the mind of the character which was not projected loudly through dialogue and action... As a performer, playing such a nuanced, internal character is challenging.

As actors, we want to go find the humanity and make it more nuanced and fill in the colors, rather than just being suit people who crack cases, 'cause they aren't that.

I would like to play some character that's somewhat dramatic. I don't see myself ever becoming that serious, or it sounds weird, but I don't see myself doing something that's really dramatic but somewhat dramatic. I would like to do something that's more real and doesn't have to be laugh out loud funny. I always like whatever I'm involved in... whether it be funny or whether it be somewhat like... I'm not gonna try to get people to really cry.

I had a real stage school voice and I could do loud things, but it's not about being loud, it's about sensitivity and subtlety in music. You can do so much more with a quiet voice than with a belter.

I've always loved subtle acting, and that's what I got to do.

No one should be allowed to make music as if he were made of wood. One must reproduce the musical text exactly, but not play like a stone.

I love playing roles where it's not just the good guy or the bad guy.

I don't always want to play the wacky, crazy parts. I love having the opportunity to play a regular person in an irregular situation in a very realistic way.

The villains that I play, I always think that they are grounded, wonderful people with enormous intellects who are very exciting to spend an evening with. I never see them as bad people.