Alexander Koch Quotes

Playing dysfunctional characters or crazy characters is only fun if they're well written. So I have been lucky enough to be asked to play crazy people who are very well written.

I like being the lead but I like being in an ensemble. There are different challenges and dilemmas with both. If you're carrying a film, there's a certain weight, but there are a lot of scenes to explore the character. When you're in an ensemble, you have to convey the entire character in a limited number of scenes.

I've had some marvelous parts, but I'm also asked to play characters who are kind of superficial people.

There's no particular role that comes to mind that I'd like to take on, but for me, it's about playing interesting characters and not just two-dimensional ones.

A while ago, I did a television adaptation of 'Bleak House,' and the character I played, as far as I was concerned, had no redeeming features whatsoever. I wasn't about to try to find any; I didn't need to.

A lot of times, scripts are written so the character is all one way. Even with 'Bringing Out the Dead,' the character was written a little more generic.

People always tell me I'm nothing like my character. Well, hopefully not! He's a character who's very defined. He was purposefully written by Jo Rowling as very one-dimensional in the first few books, because you're supposed to hate him.

I've played a lot of really smarmy people in film, and it can be real fun, don't get me wrong. But it can be characters I'm not as excited to explore.

The thing I respond to the most is just great writing, interesting characters. I like to think that there is something fun about playing a character that has a lot of authority in her own life.

I had been thinking for a while about how bored and tired I was of playing straight-down-the-middle everymanish characters that have what I call white guy problems. And I missed playing characters who lacked dignity and more importantly, lacked social skills.

Even when I'm reading a script where I'm supposed to be looking at the lead role, I'll find myself gravitating toward some small weirdo in a few scenes instead. I'm very instinctive like that and I love the challenge of not having a lot of time to create someone who feels real.

I have played characters where I haven't been absorbed - you know, what I call a typical film leading man role where you just have to look gorgeous and be attractive and charming. It bores me. I like a bit of dirt, a bit of sand in the oyster.

It wasn't until 'Double Take' that I was in a movie as the leading man, in a character that was more straight and less broad than the other character, and where the story is really about him.

These people I play are not usually wish-fulfillment characters.

Being an actor, I have no issues with a character being negative or positive as long as the role is substantial and meaty.

It's better to play negative lead roles than portray just any other character on the show.

It's only over time that you get to exploring or adding nuances to the character. Like my part in 'Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara' - I am so not the person who wears high heels and totters about like a poodle.

I feel like a lot of characters on TV don't have the time to tell that many aspects of a character's story and personality.

It's always fun to layer a character, to make the character a little bit more dynamic than it is on paper.

I don't think male characters are as one-dimensional as female characters.

I try to have a balance of things you like and things you don't like about a character. But once you start that, all these scripts are like, "You play the douchebag friend of Ashton Kutcher." It's all these characters that are overconfident or hyper-masculine.

I was curious. Here was a character where I just didn't know how they were going to write him into 13 episodes without it being one note. My fear was that I didn't want to join something where I was just going to be this prop and this mustache twirling character.

To say that Agatha Christie’s characters are cardboard cut-outs is an insult to cardboard cut-outs.

I feel my fuller-bodied characters are all in the independent films I do, and in the studio productions, I have to work harder to dimensionalize the characters. And that's certainly part of the job description of an actor - that's what you're supposed to do - but you have to work harder at it in the characters that I've encountered in studio films.

Specifically, we talked about making the character of the prince not so charming, at least in the beginning, and I'm playing around with the preconceptions attached to a character. That's really what intrigued me as well because I thought it would be fun to do it.