Hayden Panettiere Quotes

It becomes more and more popular to call actors who play characters "character actors." But I've always been somebody who is much more invested in who I am playing than how they look.

51st State was one that I loved doing because the character was so out there, and in a way I was sad to leave the character behind. I'm afraid I could never be that cool in real life!

This friend of mine said he was surprised to find that - I don't think it's quite a majority - a bigger percentage of actors are introverts than extroverts. It was a big surprise to him. Now, I know me, and I'll do anything if I'm playing a character. Or anything that's true to the character, anyway. But in real life I'm a little more withdrawn.

Really, for an actor, it's all about remembering a lot of stuff - and keeping the moustache on.

I love the idea that somebody is going to compare me to my character or think that I am like my character when they see me. I feel like that is a role that I am willing to fulfill.

My family has never understood why I play crazy, angry, depressed people because that is not the way they think of me. They see me as a totally messy, klutzy goofball - kind of weird and hyper.

I don't get dressed up as the character to go audition.

As you live with a character longer, you claim more ownership over it. You become more defensive of it. It becomes like a person that you know.

I always fall in love with every character I play.

I can't be the villain that I play in the movies.

Getting out of a character is emotionally taxing. You get used to being a person on camera, and when you move on, the character remains with you for a long time.

For years there, I sort of lived the character.

Improvisation is a weird word because we often think it means that you make things up out of whole cloth right there on the spot, and that's rarely the case in acting. You have to know who the character is, what the situation is and what is needed.

What I feel personally and what I can act are two different things. Maybe one of the great pleasures of my job is being able to inhabit worlds that you are never going to inhabit personally.

I'm definitely not a model. I just get to, in the course of what I do, especially with acting and dressing up and getting into different characters and doing one-off campaigns with brands I really love, I get to be a model for a day. I walked on one catwalk once, and it was the most frightening thing, because you're just putting one foot in front of the other, but it was pretty mortifying.

I'm Irish and very proud of being Irish, but as an actor, your extraction should be secondary, really. You should be able to embody whatever character it is, wherever the character comes from. That's always been important, for me. I'm an actor who's Irish, not an Irish actor.

If you know what it is before you even start, it's not as interesting. Central to being an actor is pretending, and the adventure of it all. That's why you become a junkie for different kinds of situations. I try to attach myself to people who really inspire me, and directors who are really passionate. That way, I can give myself more fully and trust the impulse behind why the film is being made, and I can be a little more irresponsible in finding out what the character is. I have to worry less about what the character means if I trust the director.

I actually tell lies for a living. Exactly. I mean, that's what acting is, really.

It was only when I started making short films in college and I was looking for girls to play the me-ish parts that I thought, Well, maybe I'm just going to try doing this myself before somebody else comes in and handles it. For a long time my acting was just a marriage of convenience between me and these characters that I was writing.

There is never a personal-life connection between my characters and myself. I'm a professional and I can access what I need to access, so there's no bleed-over. I didn't need to believe in aliens to play Mulder. As for my personal life, everything is fantastic right now.

It's always nice when someone says that they don't realize it's me on screen, but it would be strange to enter a one story while thinking of another character I do, which is completely different.

I'm really excited that people are receiving my performance like this. It makes me feel good, because I've been working really hard. And this character [Idi Amin], I worked particularly hard on. But I don't want to get too caught up in it, because first of all, it could lead to a great disappointment. You never know what's going to happen.

Movies are a powerful medium. People think you are your character. I've had plenty of people who think I'm Drago. They don't know about the chemical engineering part of my personality. They don't know about the geek part of my personality.

I became an actor so I can show you characters and never have to show you me.

I like being part of good movies and telling stories that mean something to me. I also like playing characters that I look up to.