Maria Bello Quotes

I'm a mixed race lad from Liverpool. I get to play a lot of hard characters, and some people perceive that's what I'm like, but it's great for me 'cos they're always the most interesting characters.

I'm not a writer; I'm an actor. My job is to take whatever character I'm given and - especially because I have the responsibility of being a black actress, and I know young black girls are looking up, and everyone's looking to what's on television - to just try to give whatever character I'm playing as three-dimensional a portrayal as I can.

I think it's always difficult no matter how similar your characters are to yourself to get into that mindset, because however much they are similar to you, they're not you.

I think when you're playing a character in any film it's so crucial to have the costume that makes you feel like you're going to be that character.

I don't think there's a certain part of a character I take with me. There's a certain part of me I leave with each character, though.

If you speak in a different accent, you begin to move in a slightly different way. You think in a slightly different way. It's part of trying to find what makes a character.

I have been waiting around to get the right script and the right director. For example, in the past, if a Hollywood director came to me with a script and wanted me to play a character, and she was a stereotypical Asian woman who gets into a fight and gets killed off quickly, that didn't seem to have much interest for me.

All of us have a lot of sides to ourselves, but the fun thing about being actor is you make one side predominant for the character you're playing.

I played a definite part in it. I guess the things that I played in films and the way the nudity and the love scenes were handled were really different.

When you're a young actor you like to go for characters with a bit of flair, so in many films I ended up playing the weirdos. I can assure you I'm not a psycho or a criminal or a bully.

It sounds maybe a little old fashioned, but the parts I want to play and I do play, you don't want to inject too much of your own personality. What you sacrifice then is a slight mystery.

I'm an actor, full stop. Not an Arab actor. Not an actor of Algerian origin. Just an actor.

I had this very strict rule when I began auditioning that I wasn't gonna do a thicker accent, because it was like, 'I can't tell if it's supposed to be funny because he talks funny.' And now I feel like there are certain characters that I could play that could involve doing a thicker accent, as long as it's specific to that character.

There's a little bit of me in everybody that I play.

Honestly, I understand that as an actor I should be comfortable with playing different characters. I am also not degrading those actors who are part of stories that require intimate scenes, but as an actress, I wouldn't be doing any scene that requires smooching and making out.

For me, playing a mother was a point of resistance; the question of 'will I get typecast' was going on in my mind.

I've shied away from playing Asian characters. if you look back, I'm playing characters that have no relevance to my ethnicity.

People like to define you through what they've seen you do. There are aspects of my personality, I guess, that come through on-screen, but I don't sit around thinking, 'I've been a bumbling suitor all my life.'

I find often in Hollywood there are many people who play themselves really beautifully. And certain parts are not that dissimilar from who you are as a person. And there are other parts where you would like to think that you have nothing in common with those characters, but you probably do have more than you think.

I'll never approach a part in the same way again. Piaf taught me so much. In terms of my work, I think I'll enjoy it even more than before, because now I know that characters truly exist in their own right. I'll have a way to bring them even more intensely to life.

I'm not a writer, inherently. Most of the writers I've met have stories they need to tell. I don't have that. I'm an interpreter. I like getting a script, seeing a character and thinking, "Oh, wow, I know what I can do with that."

It kind of varies. I don’t have a method yet. It depends on the script and the character I think I need. I’ve worked with acting coaches, researched roles, and channeled different parts of myself. It’s on a case-by-case for me, right now.

I'm straight, but the character was too important to me to muddle his world with my private life. As a nobody, I got away with that deflection. I think it may have helped to introduce Brian as a believable gay man. Maybe not. However it played, it's been out of my hands for a long time.

For modeling, I was always creating characters. I dress like a tomboy. So, when I'd go into a shoot, there'd be all these dresses, and I'd say to myself, 'Okay, this isn't me. It's somebody else. So, who is this person?' Acting is the next level of that.

Sometimes an actor performs a character, but sometimes an actor just performs. With writing, I don't think it's performing a character, really, if the character you're performing is yourself. I don't see that as playing a role. It's just appearing in public.