David Levithan Quotes

I love the powerful woman who's complicated. There's no push to be one thing or another thing. It's all human. That's what you look for as an actor: characters written and portrayed in the most human way possible.

I don't want a perfect character, I want a character who has, as strange as it sounds, some humanity, some flaws, some needs.

You have to avoid caricature, at the one end of the spectrum, and sentimentality, at the other; which is not to say that such characters shouldn't be funny part of the time, or that their actions shouldn't evoke genuine feeling.

If you're going to play human beings, and you're going to play them three-dimensionally, you have to show every side of them.

With each character in a movie, I'm looking for a human being. I'm looking for a person. And to me, I'm looking for a person that's full of strengths and weaknesses, a person that's full of successes and failures, a person that's full of joy and sorrow. I'm interested in people that are human beings that are alive.

Although I would like the negative balanced with the positive, what really bothers me is if it's not real. You can add humanity to what might look like a negative role.

I want to give my characters nuance.

I try to find something in everyone that I play - even the most heinous ones. You have to find something that is real and vulnerable about everything that you play.

I get a lot of people saying to me, 'Oh, you're the actor who plays the nutters,' and I'm not. I'm the guy who plays human beings. I understand why the characters are doing what they're doing. When you play a villain, you don't play a villain: you play a human being doing what he thinks he needs to do to get what he wants.

Acting is not just impersonating your character.

Representation means having characters with layers, showing them as human beings, so we can relate or have mixed emotions for that character.

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.'

You've got to bring yourself to any character you do.

As an actor, you can't just imitate someone. You have to get under her skin.

Jessica Jones isn't dressed in a sexy outfit to turn people on. She's gritty. She's a human being.

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

Playing a real-life character is definitely a lot more responsibility than one that is fictionalized.

You're only reduced to a cliche if you don't humanize a character.

I love Ben Affleck. I think he will be a great Batman. Ben can bring the humanity to all his parts. He can play the good guy, the bad guy, but behind that grin he's got, there is always that humanity.

My approach is always the same. I try to be as honest as possible. Find the real honesty and humanity in the character because even a fictional character is supposed to feel real. And my job is to find that reality and bring it to the screen.

I think playing a negative character is more difficult and challenging, since you have a lot to work on, and you have to put a lot of efforts.

To portray a real-life character is the toughest job for an actor because one never knows which direction to flow.

I like to play non-cardboard characters. I try and bring out the many complex layers in the personality of the characters I play.

More than the hair and the makeup, what is important is to feel the character.

I like to bring a level of vulnerability and real humanity to the characters I play when appropriate, and I feel like Dr. Culber lives pretty comfortably in that vulnerable world, but he's a professional first.