Efren Ramirez Quotes

None of the characters I've played are really like me. That would be boring. That wouldn't be acting.

I try to distinguish my characters from each other.

I think that the character that I'm playing now is so fundamentally different than Ally that I haven't I haven't felt like I had to worry about it at all. But I definitely wanted to make a different choice.

I think you end up writing things you like. I like seeing actors playing two different parts at the same time. I think it's interesting. It kind of shows you two sides of a person.

I try to keep my voice natural for each character, but the spirit and the cadence and breathing for each character is totally different. It's those things that set each role apart from the others.

The day the audience feel they are watching Parvathy instead of the character, that would be me failing as an actor.

I don't do method acting. If I play a farmer, I'm not gonna spend 3 weeks on a chicken farm. That's a bit too much for me.

I know, because I tried all sorts of ways of being in character, and the best way is to be totally straight.

My first job when I got my equity card was acting in 14 plays back-to-back. Playing that many roles, you look for ways of differentiating the characters physically, which goes hand in hand with understanding them psychologically.

Once you embody the language, the character comes really naturally, especially when you put the costume on.

Some of the great characters that I've played had to be transformational.

Actors have either got to play something that's close to them, or something that's the complete opposite.

I always work with the tempo of the energy of the character, whether he's fast or slow, or heavy or light.

The actor cannot afford to look only to his own life for all his material nor pull strictly from his own experience to find his acting choices and feelings.

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

Character acting is a much braver pursuit than a guy who runs around and intermittently clenches his jaw muscles.

I have played 50 different kinds of fathers and villains. Only mediocre actors play the part the same way.

Crazy is so hard to play, there's nothing you can really tell an actor.

When I'm acting, I'm two beings. There's the one monitoring the distance between myself and the camera, making sure I hit my marks, and there is the one driven by this inner fire, this delicious fear.

Some actors start with the right shoes. I start with the right hats.

You have to be completely in the character, and that's so hard to do. That's why, when they call, 'Cut!,' you often feel yourself shift. Unless you're Daniel Day Lewis, who stays in character all the time, there's a switch that happens.

Once, Naseeruddin Shah told me that the wafer shop was the best acting school that I could have attended. And I completely agree. I observed every customer very minutely and picked up some quirk or the other. Later, I used those experiences while playing different characters.

How many times can you play an action character, or a quirky romantic? Every actor has to find his own way to make each character unique.

You have to sort of see the way that the character behaves, and what the character says and does, and claim it in the same way that you claim anything, really.

I keep getting amazing things to bring to life. There's always something to discover with 'Dr. Bailey,' something that brings her home to the audience, something that makes people say, 'I know that woman. I work with that woman.' It's incredibly flattering and I'm still finding new things with her all the time.