William Sanderson Quotes

Good characters don't believe they're bad. As long as you as an actor believe in them and try to understand them, it's not hard to have empathy and sympathy.

In the best stories, people are morally complex; they are flawed. We read them because the world is flawed, and we want to see it truthfully represented. And because it can be thrilling to be shocked and upset, and even to feel, for chilling moments, what it's like to be a bad person.

Everyone is usually screwed up in some way and that is usually where the work comes in - figuring out how to make it believable and make it real to present someone's problems that you don't necessarily actually know anything about.

I can play a man who's despicable. But I'll still look inside him to find a point of connection. If I can find that kernel, audiences will relate to me.

I try genuinely, when I'm playing a character, to not judge them and just to inhabit someone as how one sees them. That being said, you also want to make sure that you don't blur the edges of people too much because humans are naughty and complicated beings.

You can't play a bad person; you can only be a person who does bad things for the right reasons.

It was difficult for me to feel my feelings, so I just buried them. Then I found that acting was a way for me to get them out. But now that I'm a reasonably sane adult, acting is more about my trying to engage other people: Acting is cathartic for the viewer as well.

Actors are there to represent the human condition back to itself. It's never about the actor. It's about the content. That's what I strive for in my work.

The more settled I've become, the more problematic my characters have become. There was a period when I wrote sensitive and gentle songs and these came at a time when life was at its most destructive. I think you write about what you need, on some level.

You know, the character of Isabelle in 'Love Crime' is the only character I feel the furthest from. I have nothing to share with her, so it was really difficult. Being an actor of composition is something, but you always base yourself on something you know about.

In order to make characters real - no matter what the character is doing - you have to see yourself as capable of having done that.

I'm very much a believer in the character always heading for something or after something. But that doesn't always have to be a selfish thing - it could be an altruistic thing as well. You can't play good; you can't play evil. But you have to think: what does this person want to happen in this situation?

No matter what the character is, I just say to myself 'If I, Melissa George, was in that situation, how would I react?' and once you do that you can just go for it, and hopefully the performance comes through.

At the end of the day, you have to find the humanity in you in each character.

Actors who say they can dive inside a character are either schizophrenic or lying.

Acting is usually regarded as a wholly narcissistic pursuit but there really is a hunger in me to unravel the human condition.

The thing I learned from 'Pride and Glory' is that people like to feel a little better leaving the theater than they did coming in.

There's something about a catharsis that is very important.

When you're playing someone who is angry and sad all the time, you get a little down.

What I read and what I go to the movies for is not to find a best friend, not to find inspirations, not necessarily for a hero's journey. It's to be involved with characters that are maybe incredibly different from me, that may be incredibly bad but that feel authentic.

Why do we write novels or make television about real things? It's the human condition and human suffering.

Being a good actor is sort of understanding the complexity of the human psyche and also knowing that we are none of us perfect.

I try and imagine myself in situations and figure out how I'd have reacted and responded to them, and then bring that insight into my acting. Much of acting is about borrowing from your real-life experiences.

I'm not a vindictive person. But I do want to shine a light on human frailty and heroism in equal measure.

Do you know why Albert Camus was so prolific? He wrote to keep from screaming.