Forest Whitaker Quotes

I don't exactly set out to only play creepy characters, it's just that a lot of those roles come my way.

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

If you think you don't want to play another psychopath, but the script is amazing, and the director is fantastic, and the story is incredible, then you may end up playing your third psychopath in a row.

When I played Robert Howard in 'The Whole Wide World', I was struggling with it. There's this dual thing where you feel real good about being able to play this juicy part, and then there's constant shame: 'Who am I to pretend to know who this guy was? Who am I to represent this guy for people who never knew him?'

My Dad always told me that casting agencies are like artists picturing their paintings in their mind. They know what they want for a role and not to take it too seriously [if I dont get the part].

I don't want to say I'll never play someone with a cockney accent, but I think I would be irritated by me doing it.

It's one of those jobs where you go, 'Oh no, I've got to play Alfred Hitchcock. I have to play him even though I know what this is going to involve.'

Playing Bill Clinton is really, probably, the scariest time of my career.

No one ever let me be a bad guy once I started working more frequently after I got out of college and started pursuing acting. I just got all of the good-guy roles because if I walk in the room, not a lot of people believe me as a bad guy.

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.

I don't know if I am cut out to playing a bad character or not - I really should give it a shot. I would like to play the voice of a baddie, but that's really just a cop-out!

I always figure hey, look, I'm not a rock star, I'm an actor. I'm somebody who's meant to be other people and I'm not meant to be here representing myself. I'm happier when I'm presenting myself as other characters.

Weirdly, when I'm playing an English person, I feel like I've got nothing to hang on to, and it feels a bit strange and exposing.

I wouldn't put myself forward to do a film like 'Changeling' if I thought I couldn't pull people into a story because of all the other ways people see me.

It's one thing to play a character that's fictitious - it's quite another to play somebody that is alive and well.

It's interesting to play a real-life person who has already been a character on 'Saturday Night Live.'

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.

I had great qualms about playing a man who was living. I've never met Walt McCandless, and I never will.

I'm not sure sometimes if it was because Will was gay or it was a sitcom. But that combination does make it hard to become the new lead on the 'Sopranos.'

When you hear you're going to audition for 'Dogfight,' the show about bringing ugly women to parties, you're like, 'Oh, great, thank you.' Then you read lines where people call you fat, and you call yourself fat or ugly, and it can wear on you. But that's also our dream as actors, to play someone else and give someone else a voice.

When somebody says, 'Do you want to play Dr. Dre in a movie?' I mean, how do you respond to that? My initial response was 'no' because I don't think I can do it, and I don't want to be the one to mess it up!

It's a great responsibility playing a real-life character because the person has reached a certain position after undergoing a lot of things.

If you do something and it proves to be a success, then people go 'get him to do that type of thing again, but only slightly different'. Either you do that or you go 'No! I want to play a leprous, lesbian dwarf from Guatemala!' But those parts just aren't coming to me.

I've been the victim a lot, so I've often played the person who's getting raped or murdered or abused. And so, to actually be raping and murdering and abusing people is a whole different kind of challenge, and one that was very difficult, at times.

When an actor is offered a role, more often than not - maybe 90 percent of the time - you read it and you say, "I'll take it."