Dougray Scott Quotes

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

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

If you can just actually let the character be for a bit, then you get the right sense.

Of course you can find something exciting and dynamic in any character you want to portray.

Yeah, I think the common denominator - and this is probably going to sound like Acting 101 - but the common denominator is belief in the character in the moment.

When you are developing a character you have to bring so much of yourself to the role.

As an actress, you have to give your character a life, a history, and make it full and rich for yourself.

In day-to-day life, our brain sends lots of signals. In acting, there are no signals. You have to believe in what you are trying to portray.

The thing is, even if you're playing sort of a heightened character and playing inside sort of a heightened reality, you can still apply your own truths to those characters.

I always think of the character as being me. But me wearing a 'coat', which may be a different way of speaking, moving or regarding other people. To me, acting is pretending, just like kids playing, only you pretend as if it were really, really real.

There is a little bit of me infused in every character I play.

That's what acting is - it's about... having the courage to allow your audience into the private moments of your characters' lives.

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.

That's one of the things that's great about acting. You can play all the different aspects of a human being.

When you play characters, you shouldn't just be putting on their characteristics - you should be finding it inside yourself.

I love attempting to play real people. I like to try and have dramatic moments as well as comedic moments, and my favorite thing is when those two lines are blurred.

There are elements of myself in every character I do, just because you take from your real life experiences and sprinkle those into your character.

As an actor, it's very interesting to make the audience love you while you are doing horrendous things.

You have got to dig deep into your own spectrum while playing a character. If I am playing evil, believe me, I am bringing out the evil from within me.

When I play a part, I never think about likability.

It was new to play a woman who plays with her sincerity, and who is a seductress, a manipulator and a liar! I was able to compose a character as opposed to being very natural, so it was very interesting for me. It was great to realise that I could be this kind of real woman!

I love playing confused, broken characters.

Every role is approached in exactly the same way, you have to make it believable and that's all. Acting is really serious, like, pretending really hard.

I once said to someone when I was playing Lady Macbeth and they said: "That's tricky, emotionally, what do you do about murdering your husband's cousin?" And there are, of course, things that aren't in your personal repertoire that you have to somehow understand by reading or watching other things and listening to other people talk about them.

You have to play your characters, not like them.