Tobin Bell Quotes

You decide which characters you want and then do the best you can to bring their humanity to the forefront in the context that you place them in - the crises in which you've placed them.

In the work that I normally do, you have a whole script, a whole arc, that you play. And I do believe a good actor will play every bit of information they're given.

I feel character description from a book can mislead you and actually make you fall off course when you're representing a character using a script.

I think actors are very obsessed about looking different and behaving differently, but all people need is just a different film. They don't want a different you; they want a different story.

My task is to find the authenticity in the character. I tend to go with the script and tell that story.

It's down to the actors to show the writers the potential of the character.

I don't even know who my character is in 'Grey's.'

I feel my job as an actor is to explore all sides of humanity.

I think I can speak with a degree of authority... today, the biggest driving force of movies is pace; God help you if you try to put in a scene that is about character and not plot.

I hope to land roles where my presence is carried on throughout the film. I'm looking forward to taking on a role with a complicated backstory and yet someone who refuses to lose sight of hope. I know that it will happen someday.

I am a professional actor, and I don't go about moralizing about what the character does. Otherwise, seriously, why be an actor? You're not making some kind of social statement. That's not what actors do.

I try to research or make up for myself what happened in any character's life. From when he was born until the first page of the script. I fill in the blanks.

When I approach any script, I always try to find what I would relate to most in it.

Well, first of all, you read the script a million times. Because what the script gives you are given circumstances. Given circumstances are all the facts of your character.

If I'm doing my job as an actor, the audience knows everything I know about the character.

In 'Beowulf,' director Robert Zemeckis uses a technique called 'motion capture' to conjure fantastical things, angles into action and sweeping vistas to stun your eyes and take your breath away. But what he hasn't mastered and what the technique can't do is this: emotion capture.

I do not choose characters because I think, 'Wow, that woman is so strong.' I chose these characters with utmost conviction because I think they were realistic enough to exist, and I really liked the scripts.

What helps writers, and ultimately, obviously, helps the actors - who should serve the words that the writer puts on the page - is if the character has damages, because then the writers can cultivate and excavate, like a dentist going into a tooth.

When a script moves me, I find that I immediately understand a character. Of course not completely, but I do understand.

With a film, I do my best to understand the author's intentions and try to bring the characters to life.

In 'Law & Order,' your main job is to stay out of the way of the plot. On another show you'd receive your script and see stuff that seems challenging and feel excited that the writers thought highly enough of you to write it for you.

Every role is challenging in its own way, but the most challenging roles are the ones that are badly written - then it's completely up to you to come up with something that is interesting to the story and myself as an actor.

I'm really a director's actor. I rely heavily on a director.

What I look for in any character, good or bad, is whether I can hear him speak. If I can imagine him that clearly, then I can write about him.

You just play what a writer writes, in terms of what a character chooses to do and how a character chooses to deal with their various relationships.