Vanessa Paradis Quotes

I just try to be honest and true to the character and play the part.

I think what I find challenging is just trying to bring a truthfulness and a realism to a character.

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.

I guess you should approach the roles differently when they're actual people who have been, this is the difference. Getting the accent exact, or the hair exact is less important in a situation like this.

I don't want to put on any gimmicky layers just to give the character more definition. I just want to play good characters. It doesn't matter to me if it's 'open ethnicity' or 'specifically Asian.'

I feel this way about a lot of movies, that the characters are idealized versions of people. For better or worse, I am as fascinated with human flaws as anything.

You have to play the character in the best way you know how and do what you need to do in order to bring that character to life and not worry about the millions of people that you may be disappointing!

If you're playing a fictional character, you can create a character, you can sort of take certain liberties. And when you're playing a real person who's actually standing there watching you, you know, it's - you do feel a weight. You know, you feel an obligation to not only be - to give the best performance that you can, but to make sure that you represent this person.

[Having perosonal trainer for the movie 'The back-up plan'] I felt like I had just given birth. He was like, "You can't eat anything but this. You've got to do what I say." So along with doing the film, I did this kind of disciplined workout regimen, because every cheese farmer is ripped and buff, and I wanted to be true to character, because I'm Method. But it took a lot of hard work to get there. You can rest assured in the fact that it's all gone now.

You can't play history and you can't play historical characters. You just have to reduce it to the ordinary.

I used to need the character but as I've gotten older I need it less and less - I prefer to play some version of myself. To approach any acting job as me just being me.

I think in every character there are aspects of yourself that you bring to it. But then it would be really boring to just play yourself.

When you play a non-fiction character it is more responsibility than when you are playing a fiction character because that person lived, and you do want to pay respect to that.

With any character, the main objective is to bring authenticity to the role.

You don't bring in a gay character as a way of commenting on gay issues. You have one there because he's real, and that's his life, no less so than your life is yours.

I assume most of the characters I play are exactly like me.

When you play a character, you bring yourself into the character. You get a chance to shine and show your translation for the character and her state of mind.

If you're a good actor, then you channel enough of yourself into the character so that you do get that other thing.

I play a lot of characters where I don't even speak in my own voice. I learned about focus and I learned to trust that things can work when they're not heightened and that it's interesting when things are pared down.

Until a character becomes a personality it cannot be believed.

As most characters are that I play, there's a lot of me in it, anyway.

When we start shooting I don't have rehearsals with characters at all. So, rather than pulling them towards myself, I travel closer to them; it's very much closer to the real person than anything I try to create. So I give them something but I also take from them.

You got to constantly be in character.

The actor must know that since he, himself, is the instrument, he must play on it to serve the character with the same effortless dexterity with which the violinist makes music on his. Just because he doesn't look like a violin is no reason to assume his techniques should be thought of as less difficult.

I do play all the characters, when I write them, one after another. If they actually had to film me, the only one I could play would be Samwell Tarly or Hot Pie.