Bill Murray Quotes

There's a great tradition of actors taking on parts of much less obvious sympathy.

'Freaky Ali' may look like an easy role to others, but it is not easy.

I think that, when you play a mother, whether you play a bad mother or a not so great mother or an amazing mother, being a mother is already so complicated. It's already three-dimensional, automatically, no matter what the role is, because you're playing a mother.

I seem to have been cast several several times to do it. I think in this one, Phoenix is not purely evil. She was in the comic books at some point but the way the writers created her or we always talked about her, was that she was torn with her powers taking over and trying to control them at the same time. It was challenging to play which made it interesting for me to play this character.

Where The Wild Things Are we were asking a lot of a 9-year-old kid. We were asking a lot of any actor.

It's much easier, for example, to play a heroin addict and you're withdrawing - you tear the ceiling off - that's much easier than it is to come in and say, 'Hello.' Or, 'I love you'. When you judge it in that way, the heavy isn't as difficult.

It was a tricky part to play, because Herriot is both a fictional character and a real person.

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.

He was a patient man, a kind man, a man who cared about animals and human beings, all qualities not to be devalued, but James Herriot was not a saint. I tried so hard to play against some of the scripts that implied that he was a saint, but I don't think I was always altogether successful.

What drew me to Cyborg was the tragic nature of his origins and how grounded he is in a reality that I recognise. As an actor, it really gave me a lot to chew on.

I've spent a lot of my career playing heroes, like Jared in 'The Pretender,' but playing part of a dysfunctional family is more interesting.

It's been great, I have to dig deep for really raw emotions and at the same time I have to use my intellect to say the ridiculous medical jargon while acting and treating a patient and then I have to try to have a personality and emotions as well. So it is definitely hard work.

I've never really had a chance to play a bad guy, and that's something I've always really, really wanted to do. I wanted to experience that really dark side of a person.

One must never comment as an actor, never show that a character is shallow or vindictive, but let that be conveyed. I mean, none of us thinks of ourselves as being vindictive or shallow - perhaps we should.

I like playing really super-intense, live-in-the-moment characters. It asks me to not phone it in. It's impossible to phone it in. Every American boy has spent his childhood pretending to get shot.

I've played an awful lot of people that other people would call villains, but that isn't a very helpful attitude to have if you're about to play them. They are just people, and they may do dreadful things and say dreadful things, but your job as an actor is to know why they do them or say them.

Elijah looks angelic but his beauty of spirit is what makes his Frodo leap out of the screen. Unalloyed goodness is one of the most difficult attributes to act.

Just coming to terms with the fact that I got to play April Wheeler [Revolutionary Road] and Hanna Schmitz [The Reader] in one year, let alone in my lifetime. I'm very, very aware of how rare that is as an opportunity for any one person. I can't tell you how much I've been able to take away from these experiences creatively. I really, really learned so much about acting, about myself... all of those things. It's difficult to talk about the actor's process without sounding like an arrogant asshole but they really were very challenging.

It's nice to play someone who functions in a very different way than I do.

I've played a different type of character in a different type of thing, for the most part. It's not like you can't mine tons of fascinating stuff from any character that you play, and I've always been fascinated with women and relationships, but this has been a completely different experience, for sure.

As an actor in the theater you're taught that you never play a bad guy. You have to love who you are. You can't say, "Oh, I'm a bad guy." How do you play that?

I gotta do some sad scenes. Why, I never tried to make anybody cry in my life! And I go 'round all the time dolled up in kippie clothes-wear everything but a corset...can't stub my toe in this picture nor anything! Just imagine having to play-act all the time without ever getting hit with anything!

I loved playing Walternate because he was completely the same character, version 1985, and then it developed in such a different way, physically and mentally. So, to be able to play that, in the same television series, as playing the other ones was a fantastic gift for me.

Villains are not fun for me to play, as such. But caricature-ish, intense behaviors that are based on real human traits are interesting. That makes an interesting story.

Actors are responsible to the people we play. I don't label or judge. I just play them as honestly and expressively and creatively as I can.