Chinua Achebe Quotes

I really connect with every character that I've played, just because I kinda have to; as an actor, you want to take them in and get to know them and like them; because they're evil, you kinda have to like them so that you can understand them and play them and play them with some kind of empathy.

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

Good characters don't believe they're bad. As long as you as an actor believe in them and try to understand them, it's not hard to have empathy and sympathy.

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?

If you never fall in love with your character, you'll never be able to do that character justice. No matter who it is, no matter what the character does, you have to find the reason for it. Everyone's got a reason for what they do, even if it's a reason that they're not proud of.

As an actor, I usually have to find something to love about my character in order to play her.

If you're playing the bad guy, you have to find what you like about them.

When you're playing a character, as an actor or actress, you can't judge them for what they do. You really have to find what is in them that you have compassion for and fall in love with that character, regardless of what they do or how they behave.

You have to love the guy that you play, even if you play the villain, you've got to love him.

I'm not a method actor. I try to stay separate but to imagine what they'd feel, to put myself in their shoes.

We're all the heroes of our own stories. So, when I am inside the head of a character who would otherwise be considered a villain, I have a great deal of affection for that character and I'm trying to see the world and the events through their eyes.

As a filmmaker, you're always supposed to be with your characters, in all movies, even if they're villains.

I find that if I hold your hand, it transfers an energy first. I have a sense of how you feel. That's important to me trying to become another person. I have a lot pressure to bring a character to life in any kind of real sense.

I wouldn't think of my characters' moralities at all. And I think I identify fully with every main character I've written about and would say that I am them pretty much. So in terms of that I don't think I'm similar to Bret Easton Ellis .

I think the ultimate goal is that when we're off-stage, we know everything our character is thinking. Hopefully when we are on-stage, our thoughts are our character's thoughts because we really know that much about them.

I always tend to like the characters that I play. I'm convinced that I am this person and I'm OK with whatever they do.

I actually see myself in all my characters. In order to imagine what it feels like to be another person I have to use my own experiences and responses to the world.

I try to put myself into whatever character I play.

I did a film that was similar to that world, which was Brotherly Love, and the audience fell in love with [my character] June. So to be honest, I remembered what I did in that movie and studied that film and my mannerisms while shooting in Philly.

I have played several characters that are crabby and cranky. I don't know if I'm just not a very well-developed human being or if I don't know myself very well, but I tend to find I can take on elements of the characters that I'm playing. When I was playing a character like Becky Freeley in Miss Guided found that I was insanely positive and happy all the time.

The most important thing in playing any character is not judging.

I think even the characters that are fundamentally evil and wrong, I want people to really love them. I think that's important to writing believable characters. They don't have to be likable but they have to be loved, at least by the author.

When you have a set of characters, you have to fall in love with them and care about them as each individual character.

You try to make characters you care about, and I think realism helps. Even though this is a high concept, the characters have got to be real.

What I try to do in writing any character is to put myself in his position.