Anna Paquin Quotes

The ideal way to approach a character is to find something in yourself that relates in some way.

I like telling stories of imperfect people because most people are imperfect.

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

I look at something like 'Short Term 12,' and that character has a lot of pain, and I wouldn't have known how to portray that if I hadn't experienced pain myself.

I've been honest with a lot of the problems I've had in life. Everybody has problems. They can relate to that.

I let characters be human and flawed and relatable. When we do things that aren't that great, we can understand it.

It's so funny, you go to acting school thinking you're going to learn how to be other people, but really it taught me how to be myself. Because it's in understanding yourself deeply that you can lend yourself to another person's circumstances and another person's experience.

Everybody has parts of themselves that they're not 100% happy with - that's what makes you human. And being an actor, your job is to play human beings. Your job is to play real people.

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.

In my acting, I have tried to do this - to present to audiences a living creature in whom they can recognise themselves or someone they know.

I just want to portray a very honest character that displays traits that people can truly relate to and can help them - the audience and myself because I learn from the characters as well - help them see themselves in a perspective that is outside of what they know already, and grow from that experience.

In order to make characters real - no matter what the character is doing - you have to see yourself as capable of having done that.

Acting is usually regarded as a wholly narcissistic pursuit but there really is a hunger in me to unravel the human condition.

Being really likeable all the time is just not real life, so it's your duty to make a well-rounded character.

If I'm honest about the people that I love, then I need my characters to live through the same things that the people I love and care about are living with and struggling with.

We never made attempts to say we were anybody's role model or the be-all-end-all of what people should look up to. We have always just been very open about the fact that we have difficulties and we are messed-up people, just as our fans are.

I'm a big fan of honesty and being real, so to me, it seemed like Wynonna was a very human character in a very supernatural circumstance. I was like, 'I can do that!'

More than the hair and the makeup, what is important is to feel the character.

You have to bring yourself to a character.

How as an actress are you meant to inhabit other people if you haven't lived? How are you meant to play someone who gets the bus to work or has a part-time job or whatever if I've never experienced any of it myself or if I haven't been to school? How does that make me someone that people can relate to? I don't think it's possible really.

In every character you play, as much as you hate to admit it as an actor, but there's an element of you that you bring to it.

Anytime you take on a character... you just have to find the parts of the character that you can understand.

For a writer, they say write what you know. As a performer, you find it in yourself, in your heart. You relate to the character. You try to live it, try to have it be real for you.

You bring out a lot of your own thoughts and attitudes when acting. I think a great deal of it has to do with the inner you.

I think acting can bring you closer to yourself and help you understand other people.