Brian Cox Quotes

I did 'Shameless' on Showtime, and I felt like I really tried to go super-method with that, and it would just make my days really hard to get in and out of character.

You know what, I'm happy to say that everything outside of 'Dexter' feels like a vacation, and I don't mean to say anything negative about the show. It's just a different kind of work. Emotionally it's taxing and complicated, and that's a great thing.

When you're playing someone who is angry and sad all the time, you get a little down.

I could not be one of those actors who stays in character all day long. I'd go mad.

To play these twisted, tormented characters is very draining. You have to sit in the pocket of that character for the duration of the shoot, which is normally an average of three months, and that can be taxing!

I'm affected by the characters I play, and sometimes they're hard to live with.

Acting is a psychological profession, and every character drains you emotionally, regardless of whether it is an intense art house movie or a light-hearted commercial series.

It was great to do August Rush and have all the challenges of playing that character, especially the American accent for the first time and also playing the guitar and the conducting I had to do.

It was hard not to feel violated [in Stone movie], 'cause I have to go home after walking in these shoes all day. It plays a number on your head. Some days I came home and was really upset; it was hard to see the baby [Jovovich's 2-year-old daughter].

Even though the 'Shooter' character on TV is so close to the real-life me, I'm still playing with ways to creatively portray that character.

I get to play some zany, multilayered, very complex individuals.

I don't approach my character in a set pattern. I want to get into the skin of the character. I don't love Manoj Bajpayee; I love all my characters. And that is why people today remember all my roles.

Acting always affects every part of your life because it's such a solitary, lonely, and thrilling circumstance that you're taking on someone else's character and that responsibility. It's exhausting.

One of the fun things for me, about acting, is trying to transform. Transformational acting was the reason why I became an actor, in the first place.

When real actors are approaching their work, we could be on a little stage somewhere, doing community theater. It's all the same. They're just trying to make the scene work. They're just trying to do the best they can and figure it out.

As an actor, you're just taking temperature. I am anyway, all the time, and responding appropriately. I was again cast very last-minute for Rushmore and met Wes Anderson, this quite physically and socially awkward man who didn't really talk to me much, a precocious and intelligent young boy. And Bill Murray. And we were sort of left in this bizarre hotel together and taken to strange locations around Houston. That was quite an isolating experience.

I still wrestle with the catharsis of acting. I don't end up playing a lot of likable characters, so I find myself living in a lot of unlikable skin. As a result of that I don't always feel good.

I get some acting jobs. I like it other than the constant slipping in and out of character.

For me, I have having the time of my life playing this character [Louis Litt]. At times, it's unbelievably challenging and scary, when it comes to certain vulnerable areas that I don't necessarily want to go.

As an actor it's always easier to shave or cut your hair for a role, but it's hard to put fake hair on or grow hair for a role.

When I first was offered the role on Rise [of the Planet of the Apes], I always played Caesar as a human being within ape skin.

When you play a character that is so emotionally closed there are times when you ask yourself if you are doing enough and if it's reading. That is where you have a director, who is the barometer of what you are doing.

I've had to play characters who I absolutely disagree with, as far as their politics, as far as their religion, and their stance on certain social issues, I completely disagree with them. But I have to go in and find who they are and get to their core, into their truth, and have absolute faith and believe in that, in order to portray it. So you have to walk in a lot of different shoes, in that you can't help but have your mind open as a result of that.

It's hard for actors to have to deal with the fact that they pour so much into their character, but the audience might have a negative assessment of them.

A Woman Under the Influence was my favorite. I loved doing that. And it was challenging.