David Walliams Quotes

The prosthetics were interesting because the artist was so good that they could just put a Hitchcock mask on me, but you don't want to do that. You're an actor playing Hitchcock, so it's about how much of that you're going to do.

It was a challenge to be able to create a character without being able to use one's normal set of expressions. All the rubber and makeup attached to your face left you with only a modest range of facial movements.

I've said this so many times but there's a magic when you have a really good actor in a really good makeup.

I love playing 'Madame Vastra.' Although I do suffer, spending three-and-a-half hours in make-up every morning to have her lizard skin put on. I was so excited the first day when we did the make-up test, but after six hours, I was like, 'Can we finish now?'

I did 'Vice' with Christian Bale and 'Foxcatcher' with Steve Carell - both of those films had significant prosthetic work. You do need to be cognizant of the fact that the material that you're photographing is not skin.

My agent sent me the script and I loved it. I wondered how they would turn me into a chimp. My agent said it would probably not entail to much time. Just some hair and make-up. I found out that it was not so simple.

It's an interesting but useless bit of information that every single character in 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'The Hobbit' wears a wig, and many of them wears a prosthetic - false ears, feet, hands. In my case, nose.

That was the fun of acting, being a blank canvas you could transform into the character - Indian princess, 20s vamp, Mother Courage, Oxford don, 94-year-old wife.

When I go from a role with heavy prosthetic makeup, which I've done quite a bit of as well, and then do a role where I'm not wearing any, I have to be conscious of toning everything down.

When I played Tonto in 'The Lone Ranger' and was playing the older Tonto, I would just leave the makeup on and go to sleep because it was a four or five hour job; it was, from the waist up, all over me.

It's become normal for me to walk on set as Popeye, Frankenstein or an Elf or even a chicken.

Any time you get to play or dress differently or look differently, as an actress, that's incredibly exciting.

When you're with another actor who's also been through five hours of prosthetic makeup, and you're eating another person's neck, and fake blood is being spurted out at you for two minutes, it's incredibly fun, and you're in character for that time. You can't really believe that that's your job.

I've been lucky enough to do a few roles where you get to be crazy and wild, put on contacts and different wigs and different hairpieces and dresses and outfits and embody the craziness of it all.

I was doing a movie, 'Diana,' and I pulled aside the guy who was making the nose for Naomi Watts and said, 'I'm about to do 'Cyrano.' So he did various Photoshops of different looks that might work. I was really against any kind of 'Pinocchio' theater thing. The way that it's described in the play is this disfigurement.

There's a very old tradition of theater actors doing their own makeup. It's like putting on your mask. There's an element of storytelling involved in it - you put on your character when you put on your makeup. At least, that's how I like to look at it.

I could never see myself playing a goblin or gnome, without some serious CGI at least!

When I was younger, my goal in life was to work in special FX makeup. Liquid latex and fake blood! That was the dream!

I'd like to have a different look for every film. As an actor, I think I should put more emphasis on my performance than on my looks.

Most of the actors that do play apes have told me that it's been one of the most profound things they've done, because you have to be so honest with yourself.

I loved doing 'Pop Factor,' though I know a lot of people were a bit uncomfortable with that, what with me playing a woman, but for me, as an experiment, taking on the wrath of that genre, it was worth it.

Imagining things are there that are not really there, with the green screen, is very much like theatre, when you're looking at the fourth wall.

As actors, we have to take characters, and we have to feel for them and ultimately become them, and share that on screen so that audience feels that.

For an actor to create a different look for every film is not easy.

In acting you have to not be yourself. It's like whatever character is put on, you have to just to turn into that person.