Bea Arthur Quotes

A lot of male actors are method actors and they become the characters which they both were.

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.

I think actors go along a continuum from Simon Callow down to kind of Ross Kemp, and I like to think of myself as the Ross Kemp of comedy. He's very good in 'East Enders' because he plays a version of himself. I think I can play a version of myself - that's about all I can do.

Comedy really is my bread and butter, even when I'm doing a serious character, with the exception of Outcast. I have found very little humor in this character. Most of the time, what I do, somewhere there is comedy in it.

I'm not really a Method actor. I'm always afraid of working with someone who's afraid to [break character] and won't talk to anyone because they're in character.

A silly comedy needs a straight guy, and that guy needs to be as straight as possible. The moment you start playing straight you're not straight anymore, you're bent straight, so it really requires the usual serious, straight-forward analysis and research, looking into it and finding the dramatic function, all of what you do until you feel you've collected enough points to safely and securely play the part.

Basically, I only play one character; I just play him at different volumes.

I've mainly been in dramas, so this is one of my first comedy kind of performances in Cecil B. Demented.

Actors will change their face, will change their hair, will change their voice, will disappear into the role. A movie star doesn't disappear.

Suffice it to say, every actor works differently. Laurence Olivier would put on his costume and when the wardrobe was right, he was in character. That sounds superficial, but it's true, and look at the results.

Actors who say they can dive inside a character are either schizophrenic or lying.

I probably prefer comedy. Why? I'm not sure. I feel like the energy of a comedy is a better fit for me. I try to be a happy guy! It seems that most of my life has the energy more for a comedy than for drama. I'm grateful to do both, but I would have to lean towards the comedy side of acting.

Other kinds of movie stars, it's a different thing, they bring their persona to the part and that's what people like to see, and they are not really transforming in terms of their character.

There are actors who are really fantastically talented at being natural on screen and appearing to be themselves, but I like the challenge of becoming somebody else.

It's hard being a Broadway actor going into film where you have to tone everything down. In theater, everything you're taught is to be big and broad and make everyone feel like they are right next to you, even in the last row of seats.

The movie truism is that stars play themselves, while actors play other people - troubled or toxic, and memorably strange. By that definition, Philip Seymour Hoffman, who disappeared into the rabbit hole of his characters' souls, was our generation's anti-star and the chameleonic film actor of his age.

I've heard of actors like De Niro and Streep who stay in character all day long. And Daniel Day-Lewis did it for 'My Left Foot.' I don't do that myself.

When I first watched Bette Davis in 'All About Eve', I was struck by how much I felt that she is Margo Channing and that she's Bette Davis, where she was able to do both, where you're like, 'What an icon.'

There is no such thing as playing someone else's character. Every actor takes a character and makes it his/her own while enacting it on screen.

It's my privilege to work with an actor like Vikram who gets into the skin of the character he is playing, so much so that after the shoot it takes him quite some time to get back to his real self.

I don't prepare myself for any character unless it is really different.

Because I came to acting quite late, I kind of think one of the few attributes that I do have is that I try to be honest with the character, with the writing. I'm not a tricksy actor; I'm not exactly a scenery-chewing kind of actor.

Even during the cuts. He was Rust Cohle during the whole day of shooting. It wasn't until the end of the day that he went back to Matthew 'Just Keep Livin' McConaughey.

I was blown away watching Michael Keaton act because he was such a maniacal, evil person on set. He takes on a totally different life, and it was so amazing to watch him work.

As actors, we are expected to come up with an exaggerated performance, which is far from reality.