Stephen Dorff Quotes

I like flawed characters very much. A lot of times I get asked to do parts that are kind of small but key - three-scene roles that are three kick-ass scenes. Growing up, watching as many movies as I did, I was always into character actors like that.

I choose grey characters, as I enjoy playing a human character. I don't shy away from showing the shortcomings of my characters.

If you can just actually let the character be for a bit, then you get the right sense.

I hope to land roles where my presence is carried on throughout the film. I'm looking forward to taking on a role with a complicated backstory and yet someone who refuses to lose sight of hope. I know that it will happen someday.

It's not good just to have life experience of film-making and that's all. It's hard to play a real person when you've been in jets and town cars for three years.

My characters come from a good place.

I'm not interested in the heroes or the villains. I'm interested in playing people.

When you are developing a character you have to bring so much of yourself to the role.

When I get a role, I try to delve as deeply as possible into the character.

In my career, there have been three things that were challenging: playing gay; playing a Jewish woman; and playing Chekhov. The scariest part was playing Chekhov!

It's always more interesting to take on someone that's going to have hidden sides or a fatal flaw, because there's going to be more to play with - more conflict, internally or in and around them - but it's probably the thing of finding the positive in there.

In films you do a scene, you play around with it and unless you're doing a lot of reshooting, which no one has the luxury to do, you deal with the problem for a day and then you move on. On some level, it never allows you to go very deep into what performing is about.

I think it's fair to say I'm attracted to playing characters who are rather intense.

Also, in my acting, I feel very much like a storyteller, exploring the flaws of the characters that I interpret. I look for the imperfections, and I love a character that is just so flawed.

In any character I ever play, whether she's good or bad or whatever, my most important thing is heart.

But I'm attracted to roles where I get to really go in and explore a character.

You know, we have to take these characters - who, granted, have their separate personalities but, on a lot of levels, are pretty two-dimensional - and make them into people with flaws, with insecurities.

Over a spell of about three years, I played a series of roles that were, for me, all very different, but most of them came out within a six-month period. They all dealt with a kind of dark territory that in some cases had been mined before in movies.

I just like playing interesting, complex, complicated characters. I like films that also have an element of humor.

Kids are great imitators. Give them something great to imitate.

Most actors will tell you this - I don't really know how to connect, empathize with, or make worthy of any revelation a character that doesn't have love in there somewhere, that doesn't have an idealism or an empathy in there somewhere.

When it's a bigger character, and there's a lot going on for her, and there are all these different elements that go into the character, I just love being able to dive into it.

Whenever you have a role where you don't get to know anything about the character, you have to invent it yourself. You have to feel like it came from somewhere.

I believe that attributing flaws to medical characters makes them not just doctors but something more. It makes them people.

Mature roles full of substance the kind played by Robert De Niro and Al Pacino - my favourite actors - is what I want to do.