Tony Hale Quotes

The hardest role that I've ever tried to play was Clara Johnson in 'Light in the Piazza' at Lincoln Center. It was the least fun I've ever had, but the most beautiful experience I've ever had. I could not understand her. I could not put my feet in her shoes. I came home every night, and I was depressed.

Portraying emotionally ill characters gives me the chance to really act.

As an actor, you're always playing different people, so you yourself are always kind of going through an identity crisis.

Every time you play a bad girl or guy in a movie, you really come from a place of pain.

Me being a shy kid, very closed off, showing vulnerability in a character was sort of a safe space on stage. It's always been in my toolbox, there for me when I need it.

Acting has always been a way for me to express myself, and show all my vulnerabilities and flaws through my characters.

The one thing I learned the most about acting is it takes a tremendous amount of courage to go there and stand still. It takes courage and guts to step out of your mind frame and depict something.

At drama school, I always picked the really evil roles. It's a great way to deal with your everyday emotions.

You play to different parts of yourself when you take on various roles. Like, you are your confident self when you're playing this person, and you're your sad self when playing another person - but it's all a part of you somewhere.

Gulaal' gave me a chance to channelise my restlessness into a character that had layers of complexity.

I thought as an actress I would be able to have broader emotional experiences, but then I quickly figured out that I wanted to think about tragic dramas, not act in them.

For me, it is important to pick up characters which I can relate to. Or I recall an incident in my life or tap into my innermost emotions and try to bring that reality on to the screen.

I do tend to find when you're playing characters, often - just for the time you're playing them - there are sides of your personality that get stronger because you draw on them more.

I think there are parts of myself in every character I play.

You've got to be happy when you play a sad character; otherwise, you just get depressed. Make your real life as fun as possible.

I told him that I can play it if he wanted to write it, and I would be willing to try and go there emotionally. I did not know as an actress if I would be able to get there, because when you feel really deep emotions or pain, you don't want to go back there.

Acting's not therapy, but it can be therapeutic.

All good actors are unpredictable, and a little crazy in a good way, because they feel more secure playing other people than themselves.

I always wanted to play a mental patient. I was fascinated with playing crazy people in college, and I don't know if I ever quite perfected it.

When I'm creating a character, I don't see it so much as playing someone else as just playing a specific part of myself under certain circumstances.

Everything, I think, about acting is based on imagination.

I'm interested in pursuing roles that allow me to push against my own walls, my own constraints as a human being, and to find out where I'm capable of going. In real life, I'm not very good at feeling emotions, so I like to do it through my work.

As an actor, one of my greatest fears is losing my memory.

I'm not a super emotional person, so that's one reason I love acting - it makes me deal with myself in that kind of way.

I have a lot of repression. So repression is what I make movies about.