William Powell Quotes

I'm pulling out different aspects of my personality in writing each character and, if I'm doing my job well, I'm being true to the situation and true to the character.

It was only when I started making short films in college and I was looking for girls to play the me-ish parts that I thought, Well, maybe I'm just going to try doing this myself before somebody else comes in and handles it. For a long time my acting was just a marriage of convenience between me and these characters that I was writing.

I really become the characters when I'm writing them. I'll become one or two of them more than others, I'm consistent that way.

When I'm in the studio, I write the music, I play the different instruments, I produce it, I arrange it, and it's a self-indulgent exercise. It's the way I make my music. And when I'm acting, I get to leave myself behind, which is a relief. I get to collaborate with a director; I respect the director's medium and all the actors and actresses. So at the end of the day, it's about a character and it's about a director's vision. It's a really good balance for being so intense and alone in my personal process of making music.

On 'Old School,' I was not an actor, I was Snoop Dogg, so I came to the set with a whole different vibe, and a different crew of people. And on 'Starsky and Hutch,' I was more of an actor. I wasn't Snoop Dogg, the rapper.

I've always wanted to do a feature film, because, as a model, you have to play so many different characters.

I think that's the great thing about acting: you get to play different characters and enhance one part of yourself to really bring that out and create a new person.

I just try to put myself in the sense of being a character, sometimes male. I suppose I just like the idea of trying to be different people coming from all kinds of different angles. Most of it was just from my imagination.

That's where everything starts, as an actor: you've gotta have great writing and great character development, and then you have really great materials to work from.

I think your text [script] is everything; it's what informs you; it's what gives you the given circumstances. Then you take that and you add your own creativity and your own spin on things and you make it personal. That's what makes that character and that text unique to you, when you personalize it. I think that's where your job as an actor comes in.

Because it's me playing the character, trying to find a way to make it believable and entertaining and interesting.

I had to go in and do the work of toning [invented "historical" bits] down in order to make them fit [in Lincoln in the Bardo]. It's like if you're an actor and you're always overacting, well, you're a bad actor. But if you're an actor who subdues yourself to the extent that's necessary, then you're really acting.

The character of Brent Spiner. We certainly collaborate on the concept of that, but he basically writes the script, then it's sort of a combination of his voice and my voice.

In a sense, all actors are character actors, because we're all playing different characters. But a lot of the time - and I don't know, because I'm not a writer - but writers a lot of times write second- and third-tier characters better than they write primary characters. I guess they're more fun.

It's one of the things that weirdly I always used to like about my job: that expressing the emotions of a writer or someone creative and breathing empathy and life into a character people can then identify with, that they'd feel less alone.

I'll never approach a part in the same way again. Piaf taught me so much. In terms of my work, I think I'll enjoy it even more than before, because now I know that characters truly exist in their own right. I'll have a way to bring them even more intensely to life.

The one on Fresh Hell is a little easier, because we make it up. It's a strange kind of hybrid of the real me and... Well, obviously it's me standing there, and it's my voice and my face, but it's also kind of filtered through Harry Hannigan's take on the character, the one he's writing.

I love rehearsals and I love creating a character, sticking with it until you have something to tell. It's always different though. Sometimes a director will tell you from day one what they want. Then you throw in your idea.

What I really like is the marriage of both [writing and acting] - for instance, with Postcards. I don't actually act in it, but I worked on it with Mike [Nichols] as I went along, creating the character, so it was a bit like acting for me.

I am a professional actor and I don't go about moralizing about what the character does. Otherwise, seriously, why be an actor? You're not making some kind of social statement. That's not what actors do. They may inadvertently do it, but it's because of the script, not the acting.

I like to do movies, because I love becoming different characters, and telling different stories through different eyes, and affecting someone's life in one way or another.

People watch me when I get into these characters that I have in my head, so perhaps I should try acting. So I did.

There's a kind of acting that goes on in my head when I'm writing a character where I put myself in their place.

I definitely want to do films. To see a character out from beginning to end in a matter of a hundred somewhat pages and then move on to the next role, is fascinating.

When I make music, I play it, I produce it, I write it. It's a very self-centered thing, not in a negative way. But I primarily work by myself, that's my process. When I'm acting, I'm there to serve the director and the character. I'm here to give you what you need. Communicate that to me and I will do what I need to do to get that. So that's what it's about.