Jackson Rathbone Quotes

When you come out of the other end of a long process, working with a character [you realize] this character has really shaped my ideas.

I'd never played a character as long as I played Poussey. Spending time with her, so much time embodying that character, it was so - and still is and always will be - so special to me and a part of who I am.

Its not a story in which the characters grow up, but a story in which they draw on something already inside them, brought out by the particular circumstances. I want my young friends to live like that, and I think they, too, have such a wish.

Sometimes you walk away from playing somebody and you think, "Wow that was far as from my own experience as I can possibly be." And sometimes you walk away thinking, "Wow. There are qualities in that character that I didn't realize I had." And those can be both interesting and uncomfortable.

The main thing about the character [in the Ordinary World] is that he loves music, and he shares it with his daughter. He's having a mid-life moment, and it's a small moment, really. I think that the character actually really loves where he's at, in his life. He's just trying to have it make a little bit more sense while he figures out what he actually wants to do with it.

One thing that I don't think I do is play characters. Once you start claiming that you can do something that you're not, you're crazy. I think scripts can really surprise you. You go, "Wow, I did not know that that response could come from me. I did not know that I had that in me." And so, the process of making the movie is just finding that and digging a little deeper.

I think people make their own faces, as they grow.

I have to go through that arc with Dolores, and I didn't know what my arc was going to be. We found out episode by episode, and the more it went on, the more I felt a change in myself and allowed myself to be strong and to get angry and to access emotions that I don't normally, and I think a lot of women don't because we're kind of conditioned not to. It's freed me in a way, and it made me find a strength in myself.

Every single movie that I've ever done has affected my life; I always feel more changed by a character than I affect them or change them, always. I mean, that's just kind of the way it is.

I think that there is no doubt that every experience you have in your life, whether it's playing a character or something else, you bring that to the work.

It's weird, not to sound too actor but I think that any time you do a performance, you kind of take a little piece of that character, cause it's a part of you you're using.

I'm an actor, so I'm interested in the pursuit of storytelling and character and challenging myself and expanding my craft. That's not something that ever ends, because as you grow as a person, so does your capacity to play different characters. New things come up, new things you want to explore and new stories you want tell about life and your knowledge of things. I don't think there's ever going to be that satisfaction of "and now, comfort."

I think as you mature as an actor things open up to you in a lot of ways, especially if you do work on yourself.

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.

I think everybody should act! I would encourage everybody to do one thing, join a theater class or something. It's so good to take a character that you think is wildly different from who you are, and to try to relate to that person and become that person is very helpful. It's hard to articulate what you learn, but you can feel the effect of these characters that you play and take with you.

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.

If you're lucky enough to get to play a character for a long time, it's life-changing.

I think that those of us who are ordinary disappear easily into the backdrop of life and we take things for granted. We often wake up in our lives and wonder how we got there. But the characters I create, the people I am drawn to, are quite extraordinary (and not always in wholesome ways), and they offer us the chance to understand who we really are and how we became who we are.

It's interesting to play that [ Thomas in The Maze Runner], actually. The audience gets to see the character discover who he is, things that he never even knew about himself. I love that Thomas starts out as the newbie, as the 'Greenie', and the audience kind of experiences that through his perspective. It's really cool to watch him discover these leadership qualities that he has, and the way you approach it... I guess, just honestly. As honest as you can, really.

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.

Everything that you know about yourself comes from thinking back, and I think I saw religion as the first big betrayal of me.

Vermont tradition is based on the idea that group life should leave each person as free as possible to arrange his own life. This freedom is the only climate in which (we feel) a human being may create his own happiness. ... Character itself lies deep and secret below the surface, unknown and unknowable by others. It is the mysterious core of life, which every man or woman has to cope with alone, to live with, to conquer and put in order, or to be defeated by.

I believe that we start to see our true personalities when we go through the most difficult moments. This is when we get stronger

There is a story, always ahead of you. Barely existing. Only gradually do you attach yourself to it and feed it. You discover the carapace that will contain and test your character. You will find in this way the path of your life.

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.