Role Analysis Quotes

It doesn't matter about the length of the role. I don't do films for the number of scenes. I go for the quality of my character in the film and the impact that I will have.

Acting is my way of investigating human nature and having fun at the same time

I don't think about the characters I choose to play, analytically or consciously.

When I prepare for a role, I try to get inside the character's head and understand him.

When I'm offered a role, I look at what I think I can do with it. I look to see if I can project myself into it.

I've always felt it's the directors purview to say what; it's the actor's purview to say how. It's not good for an actor to have the big picture in mind - it bollocks you up. An actor's purview is the tiny little... We measure our performance in seconds.

I'm an actor, and everything about me - the way I perceive things, the way I have seen the world - has been in relation to characters and how I would want to play something or not play it.

It's only when a project or film doesn't work, that you think about what you could have done differently - whether you chose unwisely, or was there something in your application in that role, as an actor, as a director or as a producer, that you could have done better.

Hermione is so close to who I am as a person that I've never really had to research a role. I'm literally rediscovering what it means to be an actress.

Acting, and the privilege of being able to do it for a living, is so important to me. I don't turn up and just hope for the best. I really fret about it. I do my homework; I prepare myself for the experience of playing a particular character.

It's important for me, when looking at a role, to decide whether or not to take the journey of that character. Will I grow as an actress? And will I grow as a person?

I'm so fascinated with the study of people and why they are the way they are. That's my research and my archaeology, if you will, when I get a role. I'm so excited to attack a part from every angle of what makes a person a person.

When you're doing a character, you want to know the full landscape. You want to know them spiritually, mentally and physically.

I love character roles. I'm happier in them. I look for roles that have some kind of complexity.

I've done TV, but never where you're given this much time to live with a character, to study the tone and hone it and repair stuff, to go back and watch old episodes and go, "Oh no, that's a misstep. That's a victory. I should do more of that, less of that."

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

A lot of times, you're not necessarily off the page because you haven't been able to take the time to prepare a character. It's very easy to find even great actors reading it more like a reading. Things aren't really coming alive yet, even though you know they will.

Whenever I do something, particularly if it's a cameo, I make sure that I have a backstory written out so that I can talk to the director intelligent and try to communicate a three-dimensional character.

The reason I am a good actress, I think, is because the times when I didn't have a good part... and you think, 'What the hell do you do with it?' You have to figure something out.

You don't have to kill somebody to play a murderer. You have to read the script and interpret the character.

Any time you get a chance to play a great role, I consider all the qualities I may or may not have attributed to that character and how I would fit into the story.

In playing the part of Mammy, I tried to make her a living, breathing character, the way she appeared to me in the book.

I mean, a lot of time rehearsals are taken up with other things other than preparing a character.

[Doctor Cukrowicz in Suddenly, Last Summer is] is one of the most unpronounceable roles in the modern-day theater day canon, and one of the most boring!