Tika Sumpter Quotes

It's nice to create a character, not just within two scenes, but within the journey of a whole movie. It's fun to do that.

The most I could hope for is to come and try and develop a character who is interesting, who is interesting to me, who is interesting to fans and who could contribute to the storytelling that is 'Law & Order: SVU.'

The life of a character doesn't just exist between action and cut.

When you get into a film, it is one story and one set development of a character, and you are able to delve into one character for a short period of time and discover everything about them.

Most of my films have a lot of character development and exploration, whereas in most horror movies the characters are just cardboard.

To me, the struggle is to try to make a less-well-written or less-well-rounded character and find who they are. If you really get it, and it's all on the page, then it's really just gonna pop out at you.

There is nothing like being able to develop a three-dimensional character over a long period of time. Sometimes you aren't able to fully portray a character because you only have a couple of scenes to do it in, and you don't get the full life and background of that character.

In a series, you really need to stay open-minded. It's not like a play or a film, where you can create and fully commit to your character's back-story.

The world is full of novels in which characters simply say and do. There are certainly legitimate genres in which this is sufficient. But in real and lasting writing the character is.

I'm interested in telling the character's story, not my beliefs, political or otherwise.

Quite honestly, I think that if you are making a lot of television programs with a central character, then ultimately it can become boring if you know nothing about them. I personally want to know, or get to know, things about a character. It doesn't mean to say that they still can't have a certain mystery about them.

There's no particular role that comes to mind that I'd like to take on, but for me, it's about playing interesting characters and not just two-dimensional ones.

If you give a character room to breathe, they come alive.

'Longmire' is more of a show about the characters, and you couldn't pay a bigger compliment than to want to know more about my character, or the characters on the show.

I do build my own backstory as an actor. It's important to know where your characters have come from in order to know where they're going - in order to exist in that state of being.

Any time you learn something new about your character, that's really exciting.

My only problem is finding a way to play my fortieth fallen female in a different way from my thirty-ninth.

I don't use recurring characters. I do get very interested in my characters while I'm working with them, and I find the process of fitting them into a story, and allowing them to create the story around themselves, fascinating. But no, I don't imagine they have a life outside of what I make for them.

I think for everyone it's good to have your own personal work on a character and a film before you even start rehearsing, to have an inner life.

As an actor, you want to be able to move your character forward into new ground, but also it's really interesting to go backwards and unpeel those layers and the interesting elements of what your character is and what informs the decisions that you make so that you can have as much meat to work with.

Often the starting point for characters, for me, is finding a little, most minor detail, and I'll go from there.

I love playing Blair Cramer, and I'm thrilled to see what more they have in store for her. After playing this role for so many years, I still feel like there is so much about her that is still untold.

With 'Girls,' Marnie was a slow burn; she shifted over time. With 'Get Out,' I was suddenly faced with the pressure that, like, I need an audience to know Rose deeply within 15 minutes, within a couple scenes. And that's not something I've ever done before.

When you create a character, you create it for yourself - you do whatever you want. It's your job to explore it in as many different avenues as you can in order to make it a fully wounded character.

For me, it's first about the characters. I look for a character who is intriguing and challenging and different from what I've done before.