Helena Bonham Carter Quotes

I love playing characters, so I'm always telling my agents, 'Don't worry if the character description is something you think I'm not. Let me try to be that person.'

And as much as I love the gritty characters, I like to play all sorts of characters. I'm an actor. I love to create.

I have played a boxer, a cowboy, a knight, a prince, an elf and a pirate. I am so glad to have done all of that already.

I think for me, the imaginary world was always exciting. I started in New York doing theatre, from having just one person in an audience to performing for a full house. I think I've always enjoyed playing different characters, blending into different environments and such.

It's horrid to be called a Shakespearean actor because that's incredibly limiting, and we love acting. We like telling stories; anything that excites us we want to be a part of. Science fiction is fun, too!

I like projects in which I can really act and not be me all the time.

You can't judge a character that you're playing, because then you're fighting against doing what the character's doing.

Acted drama requires surrender of one's self, sympathetic absorption in the play as it develops.

I like to be absorbed in what my character's doing.

For me, if I'm completely honest, I've always loved playing Captain Hook, also because I've gotten a chance to play so many different variations of him, so I haven't just been playing the same guy day in, day out.

In an ideal world, I would constantly be doing different characters in different worlds.

I think when you're in the middle of a piece of work, there are things that bleed over into your life. You're spending a large portion of your day pretending to be somebody else, to tell somebody else's story.

I like to play different characters.

My mother took me to a lot of operas and when I was eight I got the opportunity to be in one and I realized that transformation into these make-believe situations was possible. I decided that was essentially what I wanted to do with my life.

I like the character roles. Somewhere back there I really came to the conclusion in my mind that the difference between acting and stardom was major. And that if you become a star, people are going to go to see you. If you remain an actor, they're going to go and see the story you're in.

Acting is the ability to dream on cue.

Of all the things I do, acting is the thing that grabs most, but there's another level on which it strikes me as being a little silly. In the end you're dressing up and deciding to be somebody.

I've been doing this since I was 10 years old, inhabiting different people and playing different roles.

I love the creating part of taking on a character. It is fun to be another person and create what it would be like to be that person.

I took my play very seriously, and I got way, way lost in my play world.

Sometimes I can't get out of the character because the story is very intense.

I like to disappear in the parts I play.

I was lucky enough to be able to do comedies, dramas, completely different parts. At the beginning, when you start you have a fantasy that you could be somebody else. Which is absurd. That's part of being an actor. It's your voice, it's the way you move, it's your body, even if you transform it, you play with it.

As an actor, our very palette is one of imagination. So it is a walk onto an empty space and then imagine the world beyond it is what we do.

I really do literally put myself into a character's shoes.