Robin Williams Quotes

The trick [in comedy] is always to figure out how real you're playing it and how real it's supposed to feel. That's a hard thing to figure out.

I can only play characters that I feel like are real people and in a complete way and in such a whole way that if I fake any aspect of it I will have failed them and literally they're slaughtered.

I like playing characters that are true to life, and there's no guarantee that any of us are going to be okay, but we intend to be, and we take the time to try to be. I don't think it's any different for a character.

I try to write about real women, real people - in other words flawed characters.

I always liked characters that were more grounded in reality.

Female characters in literature are full. They're messy: they've got runny noses and burp and belch. Unfortunately, in film, female characters don't often have that kind of richness.

It's very hard to play a man without any flaws.

People are surprised when Hollywood characters act the way a real person would.

If the characters [in a movie] aren't real, if their lives aren't realistic, if you call bullshit at any point in their journey, then the rest of it is invalid.

If you're trying to be realistic and bring real life to the screen, you are going to have different elements. That's what I'm trying to do. As I make the movie, different elements come in naturally.

Sometimes you have to think about what you're going to say, in real life, so when you see that thought process going on in a movie, it feels real and looks real.

With Erin [from Paper Girls], I wanted to show what she might look like when she's 40, and I wanted it to feel authentic. In terms of inspiration I ended up using my wife for a lot of it. Just to kind of to give me almost an anchor so that I would be invested in making this character real.

I approach everything the same. I try to make it as real as possible, whether you gotta make people laugh or make people cry, it's always the same approach for me. But if I start doing pratfalls, somebody please pull the plug on me.

There are very few films or plays or anything about really happy people with perfect lives. Everyone is usually screwed up in some way and that is usually where the work comes in - figuring out how to make it believable and make it real to present someone.

I use people's real voices because I want realism. So often I mention the actors' physicality because I want it to be like a real documentary.

I try to shoot the first rehearsal because people are more spontaneous. People in real life don't really know where they are going to be either positioning themselves or how they will be saying their words. When people goof during the first take, it usually looks realistic.

I was trying to play as real possible - I wanted everything to be real.

I think what I find challenging is just trying to bring a truthfulness and a realism to a character.

The detail in my work helps to convince me, and I hope others as well, that such places might be real.

I wouldn't play the normal girl. I don't think that that's interesting or realistic, as far as how human beings really are.

If you're going to play a character who has a deformed face, you should have a deformed face.

A character on a page has to feel real, and for me the greatest fun is if you could gender-swap the role.

When you're doing comedy on stage, it's great because you have the audience there and they're like another actor in the scene. You feed off of them, laugh. But in film when everyone's quiet, it's all about timing. But the key to that is to be authentic. Be in the moment, and if you play the moment truthfully, the humor will be there.

The beauty of the world of Unbreakable is that you're playing it for reality. It should never feel like a comic book movie. It feels like a straight-up drama. It's real. You're confronting the possibility that comic book characters were based on people that were real.

One of my jobs as an actor, regardless of who I play - even if I'm playing a despicable character - is to make people think that that character could exist, that he's real, and the way to do that is to make him believable. He doesn't have to be likable or charming, but he just has to be believable. That is someone who I could see on a bus. That is someone who I could walk past in the street.