Channing Tatum Quotes

In Sarileru... my role duration was 15 minutes. Since I knew the scope I didn't mind it.

I certainly don' think I could've played the character [Idi Amin] the same way without being in Uganda. I loved working in Uganda.

My initial attraction to 'Red Tails' was the opportunity to play a character that was not me. 'Stomp the Yard' was a great film, but I played myself there.

I think with actors, we tend to get rid of characters - and not get rid of them as in discard them or throw them away, but it's just that you take that jacket off because you're going to be putting a different jacket on.

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.

There's something in psychology called the narrative paradigm, which essentially means that we think of our lives as stories in which we are the main characters.

I'd like to think that I don't have a stock character that I go to. I'm lucky in that when you get to initiate your own scene, you get to play whoever you want. That's really kind of cool, but all my characters are short. I look on the videotape, and I thought they were taller, but they're all 5'2".

I don't think Peg Bundy was very much like Katey Sagal. Definitely the wardrobe Gemma from Sons of Anarchy wears might be a little more like Katey Sagal. I mean, any time you play anything, there's pieces of yourself that you're kind of elaborating on. I mean, you're using parts of yourself.

You're in a movie, so you have to think about how something plays. It's not like you're thinking about how an audience is going to react. You're trying to present the story. You're trying to illuminate the lives of these people in the story. So I'm thinking about how my behavior as this character best illuminates what's going on with them in this moment in time. I always say it's sort of the director's job. People think that the directors direct actors. No. Really, what the director's doing is directing the audience's eye through the film.

Think of every character as a main character. They believe they're the main characters in their stories. No one should just be an obstacle.

What I look for is identifying what the utility of a character is to the telling of the story overall. If I can identify that from reading the script, then I've got a clear idea of whether or not I think the character is worth playing.

As an actor, I've been drawn to those characters that are further away from who I may be.

When you're younger, you get scripts that you are too young for and now I'm getting scripts, which I think, "I'm too old for this character." They can always shift things around to make it work and make the ages work. But I'm definitely getting more complex and interesting roles and less what you would expect. So I can experiment more and have a bit more freedom when I'm putting things on tape.

I always think once you have the lead protagonist, you cast around that character.

Every actor, I don't care what they say, their roles are a lot more interesting than we are, and at the end of the day, it's still entertainment or fantasy. I think we can learn a lot from the characters we play and I find that the characters are even more noble than myself.

I think there's a bit of me in every character. Basically it just depends on what happens with the character.

To be honest, I don't think of any of my characters as minor characters - they're all the main characters in a story that I don't necessarily get to tell.

I'm hesitant to do leading man character roles because I think they can be a little boring in terms of needing to be the everyman who navigates the amazing stuff around them.

You have a certain objectivity, as a member of the audience, and you can come away maybe being provoked into a certain discourse or a certain arena of questioning, regarding how you would deal with things that your character has to deal with. Whereas when you're doing a film, once you start asking, "What would I do?," you're getting the distance greater between yourself and the character, or you're bringing the character to you, which I think is self-serving, in the wrong way. The idea is to bring yourself to the character.

I don't think I had any idea at the time how to work with someone as masterful as he is. And I don't think at the time I really understood what was happening. I think I was in a space where I was like: there are all these things. I was shooting all these takes with David, and I was just confused, as a person, and as an actor feeling a little too big for my britches and that this thing was happening and then also not having enough skill yet, and technique to know exactly where I was, and know about the character.

You end up loving every character that you play but a lot of the people I've played, I should just say for myself, I played, I wouldn't necessarily want to continue playing them. I've done them. It's like going on a trip. You go, you're amazed, you're glad you're there but you're glad to get home. And that's how I feel most of the time.

I think there's always pieces of yourself that bleed into your character. That's inevitable. In some ways, we have similarities, but in other ways, we're completely different. It's hard to say because I'm an actor living in a world where we're all pretty privileged, and this guy is fighting for his life. They're very different circumstances. Within those circumstances, there are probably ways that we react to certain situations that are similar.

You definitely put a bit of yourself in every character, and you always have to have an understanding and empathy for the person that you play.

You have to have a good script. You have to have compelling and complicated characters that you want to hang out with. Also, since you're going to be living with your crew and cast, I think it's really critical to create a great working environment, because we're spending so many days, so many hours together.

My uniform [in Star Wars] was cool. Not much else I can think of at the moment. You know, you don't know the enormity of these kinds of films until well after you're done.