Rick Hoffman Quotes

It's only over time that you get to exploring or adding nuances to the character. Like my part in 'Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara' - I am so not the person who wears high heels and totters about like a poodle.

I'm going to do my best to channel the character on a spiritual level.

Just coming to terms with the fact that I got to play April Wheeler [Revolutionary Road] and Hanna Schmitz [The Reader] in one year, let alone in my lifetime. I'm very, very aware of how rare that is as an opportunity for any one person. I can't tell you how much I've been able to take away from these experiences creatively. I really, really learned so much about acting, about myself... all of those things. It's difficult to talk about the actor's process without sounding like an arrogant asshole but they really were very challenging.

I've played a different type of character in a different type of thing, for the most part. It's not like you can't mine tons of fascinating stuff from any character that you play, and I've always been fascinated with women and relationships, but this has been a completely different experience, for sure.

Playing those one-dimensional characters is actually really difficult because you're not dealing with somebody you would ever really know. I don't think anybody here could imagine actually knowing Cindy Campbell from 'Scary Movies.' So, in a way, your job is so much easier when you're playing a person that you really understand and that seems very relatable. I think I was coming to a place in my career where I was like, "I'd like to do something a little more rewarding."

Each character has their own challenges. The challenge to doing one scene is your whole history of who you are and your relationships, you only have this one shot.

I am drawn to roles that are strong, intelligent, and a little edgy. With Complications, I navigate my character Samantha Ellison through some really emotionally challenging times.

I always feel a bit vulnerable when I begin a new project, especially when I am playing a character with either a troubled past or unique personality.

I've had some marvelous parts, but I'm also asked to play characters who are kind of superficial people.

The thing about being an actor is that as we get older, there are more and more characters to explore and, in general, they get more complicated, so you get to bring all your crazy life experience to the table.

I did 'Shameless' on Showtime, and I felt like I really tried to go super-method with that, and it would just make my days really hard to get in and out of character.

When I did the pilot, Mort was very real to me. When I got through with the ten weeks, Maura is even more real to me.

I dig those kinds of roles where I have to dig down and find some internal motivation. I like tough roles.

For me, every character takes the same amount of immersion.

Theater gave me the confidence to believe I could play something else, 'cause it was so difficult. It was me out of my comfort zone. It gave me the confidence to believe that I could push myself and challenge myself and still succeed. Yeah. I'm very, very glad I did it. And I'm very keen, now, to take what I learned there into more television and film.

I felt violated after certain scenes in the movie [Stone]. She [Lucetta] is a tough character. The choices she makes, especially her sexual choices... it was hard for me to put myself out there like that.

The deeper you go with the character, the more you see the layers start to peel away. It's more challenging to me, but it's also just interesting. Those are the things I like to watch. I like to watch the evolutions of something.

I like playing really super-intense, live-in-the-moment characters. It asks me to not phone it in. It's impossible to phone it in. Every American boy has spent his childhood pretending to get shot.

For me, it's always more difficult and slightly exposing to play something that's close to yourself. I always like to try to hide, just because I can't stand the way I look. But, I think it's important to change every time and come up with something that's as interesting as it can be, for your characters.

I get some acting jobs. I like it other than the constant slipping in and out of character.

One thing that I don't think I do is play characters. Once you start claiming that you can do something that you're not, you're crazy. I think scripts can really surprise you. You go, "Wow, I did not know that that response could come from me. I did not know that I had that in me." And so, the process of making the movie is just finding that and digging a little deeper.

When you play a character that is so emotionally closed there are times when you ask yourself if you are doing enough and if it's reading. That is where you have a director, who is the barometer of what you are doing.

[on playing Walter] It was wonderful to be able to play a character who had so many colors and who was able to play comedy, to play incredibly vulnerable, which he did a lot of the time, to play the love story, and to play the relationship with the son, which is quite unusual. That's a gift to me, as an actor. It was like everything you could possibly hope for, over five years. So, I was a very lucky actor.

What I didn't realize about television was that's true of acting, as well. You have that space of time to develop who you are, and you can use more and more of yourself. The lines between that character that I'm playing and myself become more and more blurred and, after awhile, they just disappear, altogether.

Part of acting is having the security to turn yourself loose and let yourself go in order to reach whatever depths a character has. If your guts aren't hanging out there, you don't offer anything.