Dean Winters Quotes

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

If I'm playing a bad guy, and I'm playing him evilly - I'm making him evil; I'm being evil because I want the audience to understand that he's bad - or if I have a line that's funny, I do it in a comedic way, that, to me, is a lie. It's dead when I watch it.

You can't dictate if a character's going to come off as sympathetic to an audience. I just tried to play it as honest as possible.

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.

I try and create for the audience something that relates to real-life experience.

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

What I try to do often when I'm acting and what I like when I'm seeing good acting is how authentic it is. How true is this to what I know of the world that's been created for me? The ultimate test for me is, like, if I heard a clip of it on the radio, I'd like the audience not to know if I'm acting.

From the Twitter responses we got with 'Best Friends Forever' and the small feedback we are getting as the show is meted out, I think people are seeing themselves in the show and enjoying seeing female friendship portrayed in the way it really is.

Readers embrace all kinds of characters as long as they are written with emotional truth.

The thing is, even if you're playing sort of a heightened character and playing inside sort of a heightened reality, you can still apply your own truths to those characters.

The way I approach any role, whether it's comedy or drama, I like to look for the truth first. I think comedy for the sake of comedy wears dull pretty quickly. You have to ground the character in reality first and allow the audience to sympathize, emphasize and be more invested.

Movie acting is primarily listening. If you're really engaged, that's all a movie audience wants to see is you processing what's happening in your world.

And the most important thing - apart from telling a good, believable story, and being a true character - is to be someone the audience will care about, even if you're playing a murderer or rapist.

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.

It's the emotional trigger points that are important to me because I know if I could believe in the characters and try and imagine how they felt then I'd be able to do something quite honest.

Acting is perception, and as long as I'm honest with myself in my work, someone will appreciate it.

I don't care about sympathy. I care about playing a character who's understandable and clear.

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

If it makes you cry, it goes in the show.

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

Emotional honesty transcends reality; it's what allows disbelief to be suspended and yet what makes a story stay true.

For us, creativity means thinking about the lives of our audience and how to connect with them.

As an actor, you really want to resonate with your audience.

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.

To me, it's important to try and make an emotional connection with the audience.