Jefferson Mays Quotes

For me, as an actor, with any character I'm playing, wardrobe brings a whole other aspect. Once I have the clothing on, it helps the transformation.

Actors have an unusual perspective on clothing. You've really got to know the impact of what you're wearing on the character you're playing.

I love doing costumes. The costume is an actor's first line, so it's gotta be right!

My motto is that the audience should notice the actors, not the clothes.

Once you embody the language, the character comes really naturally, especially when you put the costume on.

Richard was in heavy, heavy costume, he could hardly sit, you know, and I turned up and they put me in two layers of silk, so I played him much lighter - you know, floating around in a pair of slippers, a bit of a hippy.

I dress according to the requirement of the film, as a true actor. Off the camera, I'm just me. I have my preferences and my personal style. Before I step out, I look into the mirror just to confirm that my style is intact. Beyond this, it doesn't matter.

I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked onto the stage he was fully born.

An actor is an actor is an actor. The less personality an actor has off stage the better. A blank canvas on which to draw the characters he plays.

It really helps me to get into the character of the record when I have a designated look. It just really simplifies things for me.

The actor is there to translate what's on the page onto the stage or the screen. So I find it important that an actor manages to actually get out of the way, vanish as a person behind the character, never to be seen or talked about again. That's my philosophy.

But I've always loved the whole costuming part of acting.

It's not brain surgery. I focus on getting the costumes right, getting the body language. I do what I can with the makeup.

As an actor, you can do what you want with your role. That's why they hire you; to take the role and make it real.

As an actor, I think it's always important to separate yourself from your characters because, when you include yourself in a character, you're taking a liberty that you don't really have unless you're life is that incredibly close to the character.

Transformational acting was the reason why I became an actor in the first place. Your hair and make-up and the costume are the tools that you have, and it makes you feel like that person. When you look in the mirror, you don't feel like yourself, and it changes the way you move. I love that stuff.

It's a strange thing we do as actors. I'm walking out the door, and I'll say, 'O.K., honey, I'm off to take my clothes off.'

I put a lot of time and energy and thought behind what I do and the characters that I create, and I don't want to do anything peripheral that is going to make an audience see me up there on the screen rather than who I'm playing.

I do not use any set methods, not even The Method. The character after all is in the lines.

What is important to me as an actor is that, even if I have to spread my arms, take my shirt off on a mountain top with my heroine in a chiffon sari, it still has to be me and my twist or my funny take on it.

Whether it's t-shirt and jeans or full monster suit, I'm still an actor underneath it all, and a good director is going to know that.

There were episodes where I would wear seven or eight outfits. It took a lot of time to get those together. What the character wears is very essential to how I create the character.

I think of myself as an actor. The duty of an actor is to be able to impersonate anything - a child, an old man, a tree, a chair, a woman.

I think of being an actor as kind of a young man's gig. It's emasculating, in a way, people messing with you and putting make-up on you and telling you when to wake up and when to go to sleep, holding your hand to cross the street. I can do it up to a certain point, and then I start to feel like a puppet.

An actor is somebody who communicates someone else's words and emotions to an audience. It's not me. It's what writers want me to be.