J. August Richards Quotes

My approach is always the same. I try to be as honest as possible. Find the real honesty and humanity in the character because even a fictional character is supposed to feel real. And my job is to find that reality and bring it to the screen.

Well, I just wanted to be a person. I just wanted them to keep writing me as humanistic as possible.

Hopefully, any character I play has an anchor in reality.

As first and foremost a character actor, I've always resisted the temptation to cure any of the people I've played or make them lovable in any way; you've just got to celebrate them for what they are.

Whether it's a very dramatic part or a comical role, I feel I need to create the same thing: a full-fledged, three-dimensional character that the audience can identify with.

As an actor, you can't just imitate someone. You have to get under her skin.

I like to bring a level of vulnerability and real humanity to the characters I play when appropriate, and I feel like Dr. Culber lives pretty comfortably in that vulnerable world, but he's a professional first.

Real acting is about giving people an insight into a person, letting the audience in.

I never do roles, I play people.

I guess you should approach the roles differently when they're actual people who have been, this is the difference. Getting the accent exact, or the hair exact is less important in a situation like this.

I guess you could say that no matter what the characters are enduring, I try to make them retain their humanity. Their self-absorbed, grouchy, selfish, aggravating humanity.

All I've ever tried to do is play real people.

As an actor, you try to bring as much of yourself to a part to try and create a feeling of authenticity and emotional truth and resonance.

I love the powerful woman who's complicated. There's no push to be one thing or another thing. It's all human. That's what you look for as an actor: characters written and portrayed in the most human way possible.

When I'm creating characters, I just want to create characters that I can relate to, and be as honest about them as people as I can be. That's what I want to see when I go to the movies.

If I have anything to offer as an actor, it's only my ability to make the person real.

I just think there's always room for humanity in acting, one can only hope, so when you bring in the whole life of a person that's playing a character, then surprises happen and are allowed to happen, and so it makes it more interesting.

I think that's what distinguishes Schmidt, really. In the movies now, so much of what is appealing to an audience is the dramatic or has to do with science fiction, and Schmidt is simply human. There's no melodrama; there's no device, It's just about a human being.

I think it's always easier to play parts that you have something concrete that you can relate to.

The bottom line always remains the same: What is the basic humanity of the character? How do I make them resonate with the reader?

As an actor, you work to the script: that's our main priority. But you have to be aware and look around for things that help you bring that little bit extra, that touch of realism that rams the point home.

Acting is not just impersonating your character.

A lot of actors like saying, 'Don't judge a character; you might fall in love with him!' Not me.

I realise that certain actors project their own image onto the screen - those who are the same on as they are off. But I've never had the necessary statistics to be able to do that sort of thing, and so, anyway, I always wanted to be a character actor.

Most actors will tell you this - I don't really know how to connect, empathize with, or make worthy of any revelation a character that doesn't have love in there somewhere, that doesn't have an idealism or an empathy in there somewhere.