Kumail Nanjiani Quotes

An accent in a way can be an entry into a character.

I love acting and really taking on another person, another life.

I think a lot of actors are overly concerned about being well liked in the parts they play.

I've played American characters so many times now, it's so natural to me. But when I play American, I stay in the American accent from the minute I get the job till the minute I wrap.

I have always like doing accents; I find it much easier to get into character for me.

I think being a character actor is exciting in that it allows you to embody completely different things, whether it's through wild accents or a crazy bad guy or a drunken good guy.

It's great to be an actor, and it's great to embody something more than who you are.

If you speak in a different accent, you begin to move in a slightly different way. You think in a slightly different way. It's part of trying to find what makes a character.

I can't do an accent unless I'm on the set. I forget how to do it until I'm on the set.

As an actor, there are so many different people to hide behind.

I've thought about doing other dramatic roles besides westerns, but I grew up in the West and I know the West.

I think there are parts of myself in every character I play.

In every character you play, as much as you hate to admit it as an actor, but there's an element of you that you bring to it.

Actors put ourselves in awkward positions all the time.

I think when you have to train an accent, it just takes you absolutely into another spectrum of the character.

I never really thought about what characters I play. I always just wanted different characters.

Actors love mental disorders, dialects, and corsets. Give them one of the three and they're happy.

Sometimes I think of movie acting as advanced pretend.

Having done a lot of theater, I'm used to sustaining characters over long periods of time.

As actors, we get to hide. You can change your hair and your accent, and it's not you. You have tricks, these masks.

I don't think I'm like any of the characters I've played - they're all really far from who I am.

That's what acting is. You're pretending to be someone else.

Personally, just as an actor, I love accents; they're fun.

The idea of transformation - playing something I'm not - is the bit I enjoy most about acting.

I used to play a lot of foreign women in my youth because I was prettier then. I would go for interviews, and directors would look at these sultry, exotic looks, hear this clipped accent and think the two don't go together. So they would give me a foreign accent.