Wesley Morris Quotes

I like to add props to render the specificities of place - paintings, food, clothing, signs, infrastructure, music, sayings and slang particular to the region and particular to the character. And props shouldn't just sit there; they should get used.

New Yorkers have their own way of speaking, their own tempo, and Texans are a lot like that. As much as you think Texas is one thing and New York is another, they're very much the same.

Any good actor is a character actor.

A good actor is somebody who can be truthful and fascinating and interesting and enlightening.

A good actor is someone who knows how to take the part and make it real and make it honest and be effective in it. If it's in a funny movie and, as long as they are cast in an appropriate way, humor will come from it.

There is a certain kind of respect for authenticity today that there wasn't back in the days when they did 'Cleopatra,' where everything looked like a giant motel. People want to have it be authentic in the look, and authentic in the way people behave.

I rarely play a real person, because I don't think I'm a good imitator.

I definitely wouldn't shy away from doing another action based project, but I feel like my forte is more like playing real, ordinary people. I'm a girl's girl.

Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.

Texas is still resistant to Howard Johnsons, interstate highways and some forms of phoniness. It is the place least likely to become a replica of everyplace else. It's authentically awful, comic, and weirdly charming, all at the same time.

As an actor, you don't want to say, 'I'm going to be loud and big.' Because that looks awful; that looks fake.

It was so easy for me to see that Anthony would be a superb Dr. Lecter because he had been such an amazing good doctor in 'The Elephant Man'. He had been as believable a doctor as you can imagine, and he was good.

You can say to actors that you've got to be the character and really get into it, but you have to make it realistic by bringing an element of yourself into it.

If you do too much acting in a lead part in a feature film where you're 40 ft. high, it's rather unattractive. You can see the acting. And it's actually the right thing to do to bring as much of yourself, I believe, to the part as you possibly can - to minimize the amount of theatrical stuff that you need to do.

I realise that certain actors project their own image onto the screen - those who are the same on as they are off. But I've never had the necessary statistics to be able to do that sort of thing, and so, anyway, I always wanted to be a character actor.

I like playing these characters who are just on the edge of ridiculous but always grounded in reality. I would never want to come across as a cartoon.

I have to say that one person I learned from the most as an actor in my life is Emmy Rossum. She is so insanely talented in the sense that when watching her work, it just turns into watching her speak - it's no longer acting; that's how good she is! She just becomes the person.

Acting is revealing the truth that is already within you and that reflects the character that you're doing.

Over-articulation kills the character because it becomes one thing and that is not how it happens in life and it is not beautiful to watch on screen either.

Farooque Sahab was so natural. It never seemed as if he was pretending to be a character that a scriptwriter or director had merely handed to him.

I believe in the fact that to portray a character convincingly, you need to live that character, own that character. You have to be earnest with every line that you deliver. However, it doesn't mean that you have to cut off your true self.

In my films, they say the action sequences are very local and not international. But why should I copy from English films?

All I'm saying is we got plenty of Texans, and people from Montana, and New Jersey, and Wyoming, or Kansas City. We got plenty of actors. So we don't need some cat from Cardiff-upon-Rosemary-upon-Thyme, or whatever the hell it is, playing people from Montana. And in the reverse, they got plenty of people from Cardiff-upon-Rosemary-upon-Thyme that they don't need our asses coming over there trying to do British accents.

If I had cast someone else who didn't have that kind of timing, it would have been leaden and one note. But Ann [Morgan Guilbert] made her really human and really funny without being caricatured or over the top. She feels like a real person.

Some celebrities, it's interesting, because they're fantastic playing a character when somebody is writing the lines for them, and they're amazing actors, but they're not as comfortable on television in front of a live audience and just having a conversation and being themselves.