Kalki Koechlin Quotes

As an actor, I'm constantly striving to find the darkness in the lighter characters and the lightness in the darker characters.

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.

I did 'Shameless' on Showtime, and I felt like I really tried to go super-method with that, and it would just make my days really hard to get in and out of character.

I had been playing really interesting roles before I got great roles. Little ones - 'The Crying Game' I loved working on, and then 'Bird,' 'Ghost Dog,' so many films.

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.

Acting is a psychological profession, and every character drains you emotionally, regardless of whether it is an intense art house movie or a light-hearted commercial series.

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

Every actor has to love and loathe the character he plays.

As an actor, you're sort of the court-appointed lawyer for the character.

The thing about being an actor is that as we get older, there are more and more characters to explore and, in general, they get more complicated, so you get to bring all your crazy life experience to the table.

You're trying to bring an emotional and psychological reality to a character that's on the page and make them three-dimensional.

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

When you're doing lots and lots of episodes and you're playing the same character, it's great because you really get to know the character and it becomes a really fast style and you find subtleties in it.

I don't categorize characters into one syllable. These are fully-rounded characters that I don't judge; I just play them.

You take what you know, and you put it through your own prism. If I play characters that break down or cry, it's Gary Oldman crying; it's not the character crying.

With most British actors, it's amazing. I think they start with the character on the outside and work in.

Well, with each character that I play in my life as an actor, I try to figure out how to find the challenge.

Sometimes when you're playing a very intense character, a disturbed character, you find other layers. That's much more interesting to me, rather than just playing 'intense.' I find it too boring.

I've always done method acting. I'm a method actor, and I've done that for years. I never did acting and decided to take it seriously because all the parts people want me to do were playing the pretty role. If I want to play someone pretty, I'll play myself.

That's what acting is about - for me, at least - tackling different personas and characters.

Playing Juliet in 'Heavenly Creatures' changed my life, and the role of Clementine in' Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' opened many new doors creatively.

I wouldn't be able to tackle a character like Rosalee on 'Underground' without having tackled the many characters I've played before.

When I did the pilot, Mort was very real to me. When I got through with the ten weeks, Maura is even more real to me.

I think Ada in 'The Piano' is the most interior character I've ever had the chance to play, either on the stage or in anything I've done for film or TV.

I always find something in all the characters I play. I fall in love with them a little bit.