John Hawkes Quotes

I think it's always easier to play parts that you have something concrete that you can relate to.

You know, the character of Isabelle in 'Love Crime' is the only character I feel the furthest from. I have nothing to share with her, so it was really difficult. Being an actor of composition is something, but you always base yourself on something you know about.

It would be hard to play a character you don't like - for me anyway - or can't find something in them to like.

I think it's necessary to identify with anything - with any character you play, there's got to be something in common, so you can link up to that person, even if it's like one tiny thing. But it's equally fun to play somebody completely different, and trying to find what that thing is to make it.

Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it's far removed from your situation. This is what I try to tell my students: this is one great thing that literature can do - it can make us identify with situations and people far away.

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

Part of the success of the show is that the audience sees themselves in the characters, becomes the characters. The more they inhabit the characters, the more they see.

There has to be something that I like about a character for me to be able to play him.

It's not a matter of learning lines. It's a matter of getting into the ideas and the will of the person. It's a matter of, 'What does he want to do? What does he want to achieve?'

Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it's far removed from your situation.

You've got to love the villain if you have to play him. You've got to find something that you can live with in yourself if you're going to play the villain in a play on stage.

When you play a character you have to ask yourself, 'Can I make sense of what's happening here? Is this authentic?'

Obviously, any time you're closer in terms of what your knowledge is to a character, you can add something. But an actor's job is not to play only people he can identify with.

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

You have to play your characters, not like them.

I want to keep an element of myself in every character I play. And maybe that's connected to finding something that you like in every character. Maybe they coincide.

When a story is told really well and is real, even if it's not about their own lives, people can apply it to themselves.

Your job as an actor, I guess, is just to make people relate to the character.

Let me put it this way. There is more to acting than just acting like somebody. I like to act in such a way that other people get some notion of what it's like to be somebody.

I've never disliked a character I've played. I've always tried to find the humanity and the reasons for what he does.

Because I'm highly empathetic, it's easy for me to put myself in the character's shoes. It's, you know, finding the truth of the moment.

I always approach any character I do as being right.

There's a little bit of me in everybody that I play.

With every character, the first thing I want to feel is empathy.

You want to feel, 'I know that character.'