Paula Patton Quotes

You can't tell an audience to like a character. And I think the best way to get the audience on someone's side is to embarrass them.

In my acting, I have tried to do this - to present to audiences a living creature in whom they can recognise themselves or someone they know.

As long as the actor is able to maintain an emotional relatability with the audience, he or she will be loved by them.

For me, the key is always trying to find the connection between the audience and the character I'm playing. That's important to me, in any work I do.

And that's what people want to see when they go to the theater. I believe at the end of the day, they want to see themselves - parts of their lives they can recognize. And I feel if I can achieve that, it's pretty spectacular.

When you have a chance to play a character people can relate to, it's rewarding.

I always want the audience to identify with my character in some way. I mean, sometimes you'll get characters that aren't very identifiable. Sometimes you can't relate to your character at all. I think it's important to keep the audience interested. But the best advice that I've gotten is to live in the moment.

When you're building a character, or at least when I'm building a character, you start saying, 'How am I going to make people like him?'

My job playing Sam Malone was to let the audience in, to love my bar full of people. And that informed my life.

As an actor, what you dream of is being able to portray people that people empathize with and understand and really feel for.

You can't make the audience fall in love with a character you don't like.

As an actor, it's important to feel for the character, as you will be watched by audience, and when you start feeling your character, you share a sense of happiness and achievement.

It's always exciting to create a character that people can relate to, where people are like, 'Oh, I know this dude,' but maybe you've never actually seen this type of character on TV.

I've just looked for ideas and great characters that I relate to and that I think I can offer something to the audience, and I no longer look at them as experiments or genre exercises at all.

When you approach it, and I hate sounding like the pretentious actor, but yeah, I think you have to find things within the character that are likeable, or at least human, and not to go at it with any sort of predetermined notions as to what that character is.

As an actor you bring some of your own experiences which can make things easier. You build off of it, but your imagination is always the best thing you have as far as creating things I think specifically for what that character is going through. But you're definitely drawing obviously upon things that you can connect to, and then you kind of mold the change that you're making into something that's right for the character.

I don't worry so much about the audience. I want them very much to be involved and enjoy the movie, but I try to just inhabit the character in a full way, where I can create a personal stake.

Comedy and drama are different sides of the same coin. And the thing about comedy and drama is about likability. It's about character first. It's about story. And for me, it's about empathy, and I think the realer someone is, the further you can go either way with them.

I try to make all of my roles likeable in some way.

I don't think there's a certain part of a character I take with me. There's a certain part of me I leave with each character, though.

When I'm putting the character together I try to find music that I think fits the character.

Until a character becomes a personality it cannot be believed. Without personality, the character may do funny or interesting things, but unless people are able to identify themselves with the character, its actions will seem unreal. And without personality, a story cannot ring true to the audience.

Ultimately, if the character is interesting and you said that before: It doesn't matter if it's likable. That's really what it is. If they interest you. If the context in which the characters are set interests you then I think then you're pulled in by it.

We're seldom drawn to a character we admire; only to a personality we like.

Trying to find a human side to the character is a way to give them a chance to have people like them.