Samuel L. Jackson Quotes

With acting, it's like you form chemistry with different people in different ways, so it's really added even more fun to work, you know?

In school, I was playing old men and women, babies, Russian people, and all sorts of weird parts - a lot of comedy - and that's sort of like home to me.

In my early 20s, I didn't even know what the Groundlings was. I had no idea. But I know how to break down a script and work on the character.

I just love the process of working with other actors. It's like jamming with a musician, except it takes a little more effort to get to that place as an actor, because you have the cameras and lights and everything. But I love jamming with these people.

As an actor all we want to do is act and play people.

Yeah, well I've always played comedy. My background is musical comedy theatre and that's really where my training is. As an actor, that's my training.

All four of the actors in 'You're the Worst,' we all have strong theater backgrounds. We all play off of each other in that way that you would in theater. You kind of are up for anything out of the blue happening and getting it on film, you know? We're all just open to playing.

In the kind of films that I do, there is an extremely limited number of people that can improvise. The reason the ensemble continues in the movies is because those are the people that can do that kind of work. It's not just an accident those people are in the film.

The most important thing, when playing characters with chemistry, is being able to work off the other actor and be supported.

I still do a form of sense memory. It honestly depends on the job. It depends on the other people you're working with, how the other actor works. It's take a little from here, take a little from there.

Obviously, when you're in theater, you have to be in character. You have to prepare for the unexpected. You have to be able to react to things that don't necessarily happen every night, or aren't supposed to happen every night. And you have to react to it in character. In six months, 192 shows, those things did happen. And the experience of that, the ability to stay in character, I feel like I've learned a great deal.

If you know what it is before you even start, it's not as interesting. Central to being an actor is pretending, and the adventure of it all. That's why you become a junkie for different kinds of situations. I try to attach myself to people who really inspire me, and directors who are really passionate. That way, I can give myself more fully and trust the impulse behind why the film is being made, and I can be a little more irresponsible in finding out what the character is. I have to worry less about what the character means if I trust the director.

Each person has a literature inside them. But when people lose language, when they have to experiment with putting their thoughts together on the spot-that's what I love most. That's where character lives.

I look at a pilot and go, "I see the landscape. I see the characters. I see the direction and the potential of the story." And I also go, "That didn't work. I could change that. Maybe that works. I don't know. We'll see." For me, I look at it, as an actor, as what can I improve upon? So, to have it out there and judged solely on its own merit is really a unique experience for me.

It's a really unique situation where you just - you make independent films or you make big blockbuster movies, but it's very rare when all of those ingredients come together, and you can really tell a story that you care about with a character you absolutely love with the people you love making movies with.

I love actors. I enjoy their company, and I get excited each and every time they bring a character I've written to life. Every so often a talented actor doesn't hook in correctly to a character; or someone gets lost in a labyrinth of over-complicated thoughts, and the character and play suffer. However, most of the time I find actors either end up doing exactly what was in my head, or sometimes do something even better.

Casting is everything. Getting the person that you imagined is this character and then seeing what they bring to it.That's why you hire them, so why tell somebody first what it is you want? I'm more curious to see what they bring to it and then be inspired by it and say: "OK, what if you tried this?" or "What would happen if ... ?"

The biggest thing that comes out of improv that gets built on is just character traits. You know, for me the singing was born out of improv.

I kind of put myself out there a lot just because I trust the people I'm working with. You have to see what works and what doesn't. Sometimes it's not my job to find that out, it's just my job to do what the character calls for. And if you change the character I'll do that too.

Many of the people I've worked with over the years came from a sketch-comedy background or an improv background, and I've learned a lot from them.

We would choreograph [ with Paul Dano] before each scene [in Swiss Army Man] and very quickly got to a place where we could improvise physically in scene and know that the other person would respond in character appropriately. So that [dynamic] was a lot of fun.

In TV, you can really get into not only great characters, but also the relationships. There are all of the backstories and all of the relationships that you have with every person in your life, and the relationships those people have with each other. It's just more dense and there's more time to tell stories.

I always feel a bit vulnerable when I begin a new project, especially when I am playing a character with either a troubled past or unique personality.

I feel my characters are valid, my characters are people, my characters have hope. Hope is the thing that'll take us through.

When I leave the theater I can always hear people talking about the character, and everyone always says, "You know, I know someone like her." And I always think, Everyone knows someone like the characters; nobody is like the character. Nobody wants to admit that they are a little bit like that.