Alycia Debnam-Carey Quotes

People say that they like the characters that they believe that I am. But, I don't as much. I like the characters that I believe that I am not. Like my role on 'Law and Order.' That character unnerved people. And I loved every second of it. I want to continue growing as an actress. There are ways that I can reach quicker, or deeper, with acting.

The real road, to me, was within the actor, within myself, within my own personality. How much Jeffrey can I find, and how much of Jeffrey could I access? What parts of Jeffrey have I never used for Hank or for George or Oscar? - and that was a delight.

When you play characters, you shouldn't just be putting on their characteristics - you should be finding it inside yourself.

I love roles where it's not about being perfect or being beautiful, where there is more of an interest in what's going on inside the character.

Great acting is being able to create a character. Great character is being able to be yourself.

The exciting part of acting, I don't know how else to explain it, are those moments when you surprise yourself.

To me, any character that is conflicted inside as well as outside of themselves is always a better role to play.

In acting, you have to pull from real-life situations, from people, to help develop a character.

Some of my favorite shows are ones where the characters are vile and human and flawed. That's what makes me want to keep watching a show, not writers telling me how to feel about 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.

There are some things that as an actor scare you, and if you can capture that fear on screen, it will be interesting.

You don't play villains like they are villains. You play them like you know exactly where they are coming from. Which hopefully you do.

I've been trying to take this journey over the last four years of getting away from playing manipulative and villainous characters and playing characters that are affected by what happens to them as opposed to unaffected.

It is easier to get an actor to be a cowboy than to get a cowboy to be an actor.

I often hear actors say during their interviews: 'I want to play a crazy person, a murderer, or someone who's on edge.' But that question scares me. I mean, of course there are characters I'd like to play, but I can't really say specifically who they are. It's much too hard to play a convincing normal person as it is.

The closer a part is to you, the harder it is to play. Anything else is just imitation. If I'm playing a Russian countess, I get the hat, the accent, the outrageousness. Easy. Playing a murderess? Perfect.

As an actor, I tend to enjoy going to the dark side.

Even if I'm playing a bad guy, I work hard to make him multi-leveled and interesting.

I like playing interesting, complicated women.

I try to have a true line in every character I play.

Acting is not just impersonating your character.

You want to be able to really tackle a character and make it a fully-dimensional human being who is complicated, funny, and all the things that a person could be. If you can achieve that, you feel great. You so rarely get to do that as an actress in general, but as a black actress, it's almost never.

I love playing complex characters.

My character in 'Hollyoaks' went through absolutely everything! There's not one emotion where I'm going to go, 'I don't know how to play this.'

Even while I'm really interested in playing female characters that are varied and interesting and dynamic, I'm not of the mind that you always want to play strong female characters. I think I just want to play characters that are interesting, and not all people are 'strong.'