Ann Nocenti Quotes

There is always that thought that you might get stuck with a character. But there's always the notion that every character is always evolving.

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 don't mind a little Sturm und Drang. When I was doing 'Riding in Cars With Boys,' I wouldn't smile at anybody, because my character, Bev, was angry at the world. I'm the opposite. Inside my head I'd be like, God, I'll explain to you at the end of shooting that I'm not this person.

If there's ever going to be a challenge for an actor, it's that character who's often evolving - which is not often the case in television.

A lot of times, scripts are written so the character is all one way. Even with 'Bringing Out the Dead,' the character was written a little more generic.

All the characters I've ever played have really had nothing to do with looks. There's a lot of things that are a lot more interesting to me to play than that.

I was a little bit wary of playing Nicholas. In the script, which I think is true of the novel and the film, he's the only character not singing and dancing in a musical style. Playing someone who is the personification of good is a little difficult.

Having a sweet, wide-eyed, awkward character is more charming and allows for more range. If you come from anger, you're going to reach a ceiling very quickly.

I often hear actors say during their interviews: 'I want to play a crazy person, a murderer, or someone who's on edge.' But that question scares me. I mean, of course there are characters I'd like to play, but I can't really say specifically who they are. It's much too hard to play a convincing normal person as it is.

To me, there are things you're good at and things you're not so good at. For some reason, I'm good at darker characters. It has to do with how you look.

Even if I'm playing a bad guy, I work hard to make him multi-leveled and interesting.

When a character has so many secrets and so much inner life, it's a joy to play those characters because you can use your craft.

Tortured characters are, I think, an actor's dream.

I like doing stuff that is sad or angry. It's a challenge, because you're doing a mix of scenes and you're making a person.

It is very easy to play a sweet girl-next-door but difficult to portray a grey character.

The only pressure, as an actor, is to step into Eric Carter's shoes and make him as fully and as complex and as flawed and as human as I could.

My character on 'Voyager,' because of the way he was presented, I could go either way. I could be a real buffoon, a windbag, be self-involved, and we could get a lot of comic mileage from him. However, the audience accepted me with gravity when I was in a dire situation, so they would follow me in comic or dramatic stories.

'Freaky Ali' may look like an easy role to others, but it is not easy.

I want to give my characters nuance.

In 'Anniyan,' the character I did had three different looks in the film, and I was able to carry it off.

It was new to play a woman who plays with her sincerity, and who is a seductress, a manipulator and a liar! I was able to compose a character as opposed to being very natural, so it was very interesting for me. It was great to realise that I could be this kind of real woman!

I love playing confused, broken characters.

The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way. If it never surprises it is flat. Flat characters ... in their purest form ... are constructed round a single idea or quality; when there is more than one factor to them, we get the beginning of the curve toward the round. The really flat character can be experessed in one sentence such as, "I will never desert Mr Micawber." There is Mrs Micawber - she says she won't desert Mr Micawber; she doesn't, and there she is.

I loved playing Walternate because he was completely the same character, version 1985, and then it developed in such a different way, physically and mentally. So, to be able to play that, in the same television series, as playing the other ones was a fantastic gift for me.

I think you approach a part the same way and just find out in what's making them tick and who they are. In a movie like this you may have a little less time and few dialogue scenes and exposition scenes for your character to really get that across, and so I wanted to be able to convey that she's not somebody who's just punching a clock but she has this weird emotional investment in her job to where she does get quite myopic and that's what makes her relentless.