Tahir Raj Bhasin Quotes

The thing about being an actor is that as we get older, there are more and more characters to explore and, in general, they get more complicated, so you get to bring all your crazy life experience to the table.

I'm not particularly fond of playing villains. I do want to be a working actor, and I've had to look at what was offered to me, what roles I could get, and what I could do with them. Even though I'm not drawn to putting those kinds of darker characters out there, I think it's an interesting challenge.

For whatever reason I tend to get roles that are more damaged.

There's something important, as an actor, about allowing yourself to be approached by people to do roles. People see different things in you.

I love playing characters, so I'm always telling my agents, 'Don't worry if the character description is something you think I'm not. Let me try to be that person.'

I don't have to be a leading man. I can be a character actor. That's really what interests me anyway.

The good and wonderful thing about my whole career is that I've always felt that the audience, if I do it well, will track wherever I go, whether it's President or a lawyer or bad guy or good.

It's an actor's job to play all the human conditions - light, dark, and medium.

After 'Prom Night' I did two movies where I was playing a prostitute. I gravitate towards characters that have some sort of inner turmoil or some sort of character arc. That's the great thing about acting, so many different things and being really diverse in your choices.

Actors are hard to photograph because they never want to reveal who they are. You don't know if you're getting a character from a Chekhov play or a Polanski film. It depends what mood they're in.

I would like to do more dramas when I find a good role that will allow me to politely upset people's expectations of me as a comic actor.

Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay and Al Pacino made me want to act. I've always been interested in men with a vulnerable side.

I would really like to play someone contemporary, as I've done lots of period pieces. I would love to play an American bimbo or a grimy Londoner. But I'm probably more suited in people's minds to playing a corseted victim.

Perhaps I've been perceived more as a romantic comedy actor, but overall, I enjoy acting in any shape or form.

The fun is getting to wear multiple disguises and getting to explore multiple personalities and bring them to life. So a movie career definitely affords me that.

Films are really cool because, every couple months, or however many times you can get a job because there's a lot of luck involved in that, you're playing a different character.

My ideal role would be anything that allows me to play anyone the public is familiar with and to be able to show them that, but in a new light.

I've always done method acting. I'm a method actor, and I've done that for years. I never did acting and decided to take it seriously because all the parts people want me to do were playing the pretty role. If I want to play someone pretty, I'll play myself.

Playing Juliet in 'Heavenly Creatures' changed my life, and the role of Clementine in' Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' opened many new doors creatively.

That's what acting is - it's about... having the courage to allow your audience into the private moments of your characters' lives.

My character in 'Hollyoaks' went through absolutely everything! There's not one emotion where I'm going to go, 'I don't know how to play this.'

I had been playing really interesting roles before I got great roles. Little ones - 'The Crying Game' I loved working on, and then 'Bird,' 'Ghost Dog,' so many films.

One of the difficulties you run into is that acting and celebrity are so closely intertwined. People make careers out of being charismatic personalities. It's one of those things that people have come to expect from actors. Personalities that don't change from role to role. I don't want it that way.

My first five or six years in L.A., I was just trying to get two cents together to stay here. Playing Jason Stackhouse on 'True Blood' put me in a position, financially, to make decisions based on creativity, to choose roles based on whether I connected with them. I love the Jason Stackhouse character... But I also love stepping out of his shoes.

Tortured characters are, I think, an actor's dream.