Philip Seymour Hoffman Quotes

I think, first of all, every time you want to play somebody who is real is always challenging and always scary, because you are given a responsibility of someone's real life.

You're playing a character in a drama who happens to be based on someone who existed. It's never going to 'be' that person, but it's based on someone well-known, and you want to create enough of that person for it not to be a distraction.

It's one thing to play a character that's fictitious - it's quite another to play somebody that is alive and well.

It's challenging to play a real-life character because you know that it existed in the history and you have certain parameters to follow and stay within.

I think every role you take on, you should take on the responsibility of doing the best representation of that person or that character or that role. When it is a human being that has actually existed, and it is a person that people know of, yeah, you feel an even more amount of pressure to do a good job.

Whenever you're going to play a real person, you run the risk of well, everybody in the world kind of has an image of what that person is and who he should be and so you really have to do your homework.

It's always very daunting to play someone who actually existed. You have to honor that, and be specific and accurate and try to make people believe that you're that guy, which is really hard.

If there's anything about someone's life that's important enough to make a movie about it, I have to take responsibility to get all of it right. It's a huge responsibility.

Real-life people are often the hardest to play, people that you recreate who have actually lived, because you have to live up to people's knowledge of those characters.

There's a certain amount of pressure that comes from playing real people. It's a pressure to deliver something fair and right to the real person and any living relatives. But generally, it's a joy, as you get to target your interest on a particular era.

It's not every day you get to be in a movie about Jackie Robinson, so you want to do it as right as you can.

I guess when you're carrying a film, you feel the weight of that because you're there every day, and you feel the weight of your character that way.

Whenever you have a character in which one of his defining qualities is his sexuality, it's always challenging, because you don't want to bring in someone who's going to play that in a phony way.

'Inherent Vice' was a novel that already existed, and in 'Steve Jobs,' I was playing a real person; in those situations, you do feel an added pressure to please.

It's daunting to play a real living person.

Playing a real-life character is definitely a lot more responsibility than one that is fictionalized.

Anything in which you're playing someone real does make you feel responsible for making the story as true as it can be.

It's a big responsibility, I think, when you play somebody who has existed but also somebody who has just recently passed away.

When you play a non-fiction character it is more responsibility than when you are playing a fiction character because that person lived, and you do want to pay respect to that.

Whenever you're telling a story about true-life events and about real people, there's a tremendous responsibility-slash-burden to get it right.

All the historical elements should feel organic to the story but not hammered down to serve a purpose.

I feel particularly passionate about being a part of 'Rillington Place' because I've never had a job where I've felt so much responsibility and I've had to handle something with so much delicacy, because this story and these people were real.

The challenge is making sure that every single moment is honest, no matter what. It's doing Eric Carter justice. Not trying to fill Jack Bauer's shoes. Not trying to step into Kiefer's legacy.

When you are in the musical theater and you are someone who looks like me, you are constantly bending yourself, bending your voice to fit the job they've given you.

It's a great responsibility playing a real-life character because the person has reached a certain position after undergoing a lot of things.