Billy Crudup Quotes

When I do a character, I try to base it on someone I have met or an experience I've had.

In terms of the character itself, I can't really say that I find anything really difficult. I enjoy the character so much I don't perceive difficulty in trying to be him. It's just a matter of how do we get there.

But today I felt different, today I forgot how long it takes to get into the skin of a character and I remembered it, because today I actually got into that skin and it felt so different.

My job always is to play a person, not to judge her.

I suppose with any character that you play you always bring your personal experience to it. You always bring people that you know or that you've met and sort of - this is what I do, I mean, I don't know what anyone else does - but people that you know or that you've met that have affected you in certain ways, you bring into it.

In school, I was playing old men and women, babies, Russian people, and all sorts of weird parts - a lot of comedy - and that's sort of like home to me.

Changing writing styles is like an actor taking on a different part.

Even at drama school if there was a part of some eastern European thug it would be me.

As an actor, it's amazing to get to create different characters.

My brother Trevor is theatrically trained. I used to watch him when I was younger and I was in love with it. It just seemed really fun to be someone else. So I begged my mom; she was hesitant, but she eventually allowed me. And it turned out well, I guess.

I always try to make each character my own.

In order to represent life on the stage, we must rub elbows with life, live ourselves.

I love creating characters that people may or may have not ever seen before. But I enjoy the opportunity to try to make something new, and that's when I really come alive as an actor, so I really enjoyed working on 'Arrow.'

You draw on whatever's relevant to the part you're playing; it makes it more personal.

There's always something more to be accomplished with a character. Theater is a human experience. There's nothing shellacked or finished off about it. I guess that's why it always draws me back.

As an actor, it's exciting to play a role that's so far from what you are and to have people respond to it like a real human being!

The rules of drama are very much separate from the properties of life. I think that's especially true of Shakespeare.

Quite often, I have a compelling sense of how a role should be played. And I'm proved - equally as often - quite wrong.

You have to start from a place of trying to create a character.

When you're doing a play, you don't always have a practical world that you're working off of. You have to create it for yourself.

As an actor, you always use the tools of who you are and your experience of what you have to offer.

As an actor, I draw from myself.

The work of acting, in and of itself, is something that is infinitely enjoyable.

I made some shorts that I'm not in. I think because I write so many short stories, it's not that hard to come up with characters that are not me. But my way into making movies has been through performing. My very first short film, I played a child and her own mother. So in some ways, to me, my great achievement so far is just that I've gotten all these other people to play the other parts. That's what makes it a real movie.

The fallacy is that you have to hold some sort of stake in the grief or horror in order to write about it - I think the opposite is true.