Tracey Ullman Quotes

When I do a character, I try to base it on someone I have met or an experience I've had.

I started improvising the Cliff character, based on someone I grew up with.

The way I like to work is to attach personal experiences to what I'm doing, so it helps tremendously if I can write my own play under what the writer has written.

I think you have to draw from any character and bring it to yourself as much as possible.

I think every character I've ever come up with has been based on someone or something I've known.

There are always certain things that you tap into, your own personal experiences, and I try to base my characters on someone I know or someone I've seen.

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

I can watch movies that I've been in, and if there's an emotional scene, I remember specifically what I was using, what I was thinking about, because I am very specific in how I work.

As an actor, I think it is important you at least almost like the character that you're playing. Or can find a personal justification for the character as to why they're doing what they're doing.

As an actor, I think it's always important to separate yourself from your characters because, when you include yourself in a character, you're taking a liberty that you don't really have unless you're life is that incredibly close to the character.

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.

Good acting comes from finding the essence of a character.

One of the reasons I love acting is because I'm so interested in other people's lives, and I often incorporate things I hear or observe into my work. I've become a bit of a 'person addict,' and so I like brushing up against lots of different characters.

There are bits of me in all my characters.

I love to be a working actor, and I love to read scripts as they come in. If I find the script or character that is interesting, I want to transform myself into that character.

In acting process, it's very difficult to explain. It's something very intimate, very private.

Very few of my characters are based on people I've known. It is too constricting.

When you're an actor or any kind of artist, you use your life as something to draw from in every experience.

You know, young actors say all the time, 'Should I use my own life experience?' And my response is, 'What choice do you have?'

Well, with each character that I play in my life as an actor, I try to figure out how to find the challenge.

A lot of times characters are combinations of people I come across in life. I people-watch a lot.

In every film, whether it's a fictional character or not, you create an idea of the character and for me I always do a bad impersonation to start with.

I don't know if I'm a method actor.

Acting is a very personal process. It has to do with expressing your own personality, and discovering the character you're playing through your own experience - so we're all different.

My characters are all made up of pieces of people I have known, their backstories pieces of mine.