Deanna Raybourn Quotes

… temperament is your basic orientation toward life. The Elizabethans boiled it down to four types: You were choleric or sanguine or melancholy or aggressive. You can be a good leader from any of them. Lincoln was melancholy, but what a president! It’s more to do with how you grow, how you learn from your mistakes.

I think it's a bit short-sighted to play any character and not explore, in some respects, the way they act when things get really bad.

One of the ways that you reveal character is by getting a character into a situation and seeing what they do.

I think people who are regarded as better actors must have better instincts because, at the end of the day, once they say 'action,' it's you who has to do it right. You can do all the research and preparation or none at all, but it's your instincts that tell you, 'No, I'll do it like this.'

Most good actors have a huge intelligence about the human condition and a real open heart to different kinds of people and behavior.

Nice people with common sense do not make interesting characters. They only make good former spouses.

In this business, it's easy for either your heart or your head to be swayed, and I try to always stay true to who I am.

I wouldn't say that I'm very similar to the character of Nathan at all. Both of us have had very different upbringings and backgrounds. I have a competitive nature like the character of Nathan. That's really easy to draw from when I'm acting; that's probably the biggest similarity.

You have to think an awful lot about your motivations or people's behavioral intentions or what their body language can indicate or what's really going on or what makes people sometimes do, sometimes, the irrational things they do.

If your head tells you one thing, and your heart tells you another, before you do anything, you should first decide whether you have a better head or a better heart.

We should make decisions in life with our hearts, not our brains, not only in music but in daily life.

I've always been a believer in research. It's great to have an instinctual human reaction to a character, too, of course, but it has to be countered with knowledge and understanding.

The thing that I love is human behavior - why people do what they do, who they are, and the choices that they make - and that has to always be plot driven.

I don't like the word 'strong,' because a strong character is never an interesting character. A character is made interesting by their vulnerabilities and their weaknesses.

Characters are so important to a story that they actually decide where the story is going. When I write, I know my characters. I know how things are going to end, and I know some important incidents along the way.

While 'A Blessed Child' might have been a more tough-minded book had Ullmann thrown a spanner into the works, it's not hard to understand her decision to keep things going.

It's been very important for me to follow my gut or my heart, or whichever organ you want to go by.

Most of the time, I see what I see, I search my feelings, and then I make my decisions based on my gut - and I don't always make the right ones.

Everything has to be pulling weight in a short story for it to be really of the first order.

I think the way we react to things is a big indicator of our character and what type of person we are.

I always want my character to have dimension, no matter what phase of life or situation they find themselves in.

I'm interested in character and people and motivations and things like that.

When I first became captain of the Indian cricket team in 2000, many well-wishers and journalist friends gifted me the classic Mike Brearley book, 'The Art of Captaincy.' I mean no disrespect to the book or Mr, Brearley, who I admire a great deal, but books or team meetings don't make you good captains.

For me, it's infinitely more interesting to read or watch a character making decisions they think are right, but the audience knows differently, and seeing that disconnect. The only way characters can grow and learn is by making the wrong decisions and then learning from them.

I follow my heart and my instinct about films and people.