Jon Heder Quotes

I try to play serious scenes a little funny and the comedy a little serious.

I love the simplicity of Kevin Spacey's work. He really does a subtle interpretation of every character, and that's kind of my style of acting when it comes to dramatic roles.

I love doing comedy. But sometimes, that exists at sort of the mid-level to the high-comedy level of craziness, and I don't necessarily get to plumb the depths of kind of serious acting as often.

It was new to play a woman who plays with her sincerity, and who is a seductress, a manipulator and a liar! I was able to compose a character as opposed to being very natural, so it was very interesting for me. It was great to realise that I could be this kind of real woman!

I would love nothing more to participate in a real struggle to find a character, and really delve into and develop a character. That's why I'm an actor.

I don't feel the pressure to deliver an unrealistically great man to the screen; I just want to be honest to who my character is on the page. If I can reflect that and put some heart into him and make him real, then I think I've done my job, and I think that people will like who he is.

I think I've grown up in an era where character acting on film has become less desirable for the producers and directors and therefore the audience. They have got used to the people that those actors really are.

I want a script to affect me in some way. I am usually drawn to character studies, scripts about real people and the world we live in not some fantasy.

What I do is to collaborate with each actor and work one-on-one to create a character. And that is a matter of huge complexity and is a combination of a great deal of discussion and a lot of practical work. It involves a lot of consideration for the real people out there, and all kinds of sources of real people. The result is the character. But I'm not supposed to talk about what it is we do, because it's nobody's business.

The great exception to that, of course, is Johnny Depp, who is absolutely the ultimate character actor. Johnny Depp is the future of the character actor and thanks to his success maybe we will see the return of an era when my sort of actor is back in vogue. It's not in vogue for me to be in Hollywood movies as lots of different people.

The real object of the drama is the exhibition of human character.

I am drawn to roles that are strong, intelligent, and a little edgy. With Complications, I navigate my character Samantha Ellison through some really emotionally challenging times.

When you do your comedy and your drama, your acting style doesn't change. If it's a comedy, the situations and the characters might be a little funnier, but you're just trying to be honest.

Being an actor opened doors for me to explore my emotions as different people and characters, and expand my own inner soul.

I'm trying to use the camera to get into people's heads. I use camera techniques a lot to articulate character.

I never base characters on real people - you can get into so much trouble that way!

That's your job as the actor, to understand the human part of the character, to make it real.

Whatever character you're playing you have to complete the entire interior infrastructure, whatever it is - but what gets divulged or what people completely understand depends on the script and what you decide to show. But you have to know it.

As a writer, I haven't delved into dramatic writing. As an actor, I could always, even more so than comedy, do drama. When you do your comedy and your drama, your acting style doesn't change. If it's a comedy, the situations and the characters might be a little funnier, but you're just trying to be honest.

I did this movie right after it about the life of Chet Baker. It's called Born to Be Blue. In that situation, there's a real clear character you're drawing on. It's a real person. It's really exciting and interesting to do the research to figure out how to make that a nuanced, three-dimensional human being.

All my roles are character roles. On the other hand, there are those people who have an inner...I think we all do the same thing. You can't get by on aura alone. That I know. Everyone has to dig in. Everyone has to do the same set of, "What is this about? What is this character doing?" Everybody from Spencer Tracy to Brad Pitt to Jeffrey Tambor.

I can only play characters that I feel like are real people and in a complete way and in such a whole way that if I fake any aspect of it I will have failed them and literally they're slaughtered.

You have a lot more leeway to be contradictory playing a character than most of the scripts have in them. That's how all actors are. We have so many different sides of ourselves and we're so different, in meeting with different people. The audiences relate more to that and find that more believable.

I would make a huge distinction between theater improvisation and film improvisation. There isn't much improvisation in film - there's virtually none. The people that theoretically could be good at this in a theater situation don't necessarily do this in a film in a way that will work, because it's much broader on a stage. But in a movie, it has to be real, and the characters have to look entirely real because it's being done as a faux documentary, so there are even fewer actors that can do that on film.

Working on camera is a different ballgame in the sense that it's far more intimate work, but the basics and the foundations of being able to create something that isn't necessarily your own instincts - is a character that you have inside your head - whether you're talking about television or film or theater, that still has to be the grounding work.