Toby Jones Quotes

As actors, that has been challenging for us to pick up the nuances of the living legends we are playing.

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.

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.

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

The challenge is to stay true to the characters while also having them be entertaining every day, because it turns out that just watching someone be true to themselves isn't that rad to watch.

It was a tricky part to play, because Herriot is both a fictional character and a real person.

I like to play people that are real, a real person, and then something that's interesting with that person. I think it's a lot more challenging to do that than something that's extremely fantasy-like.

None of the characters I've played are really like me. That would be boring. That wouldn't be acting.

In every character you play, as much as you hate to admit it as an actor, but there's an element of you that you bring to it.

I tend to get comfortable with the dialogue and find out who the person is in the script and try to hit that. People are sort of independent of their occupations and their pastimes. You don't play a politician or a fireman or a cowboy - you just play a person.

An actor is supposed to emulate life. Instead, alas, many are imitating other actors. You don't fashion your knowledge of theatre or your approach to a role on the basis of what other actors have done. This kind of thinking is a great danger, especially in dealing with TV producers who frequently say things like, 'This is a Sean Connery type.'

It's a great challenge to get to play a real-life character. Every actor would love to get a chance, at least once in his life, to play a real-life character.

When you're portraying someone that really existed, there has to be a time as an actress where you leave reality and move into the fantasy world so you can do your job of creating a character.

That's what I love about acting, is playing different roles. I want to work for the character, and not make it work for me.

Ellis Peters's historical detail is very accurate and very minute, and therefore is not only interesting to read but good for an actor to acquire a sense of the period. And the other thing I think is that an actor lives in the land of imagination.

Well, from an acting point of view, I bear no relation, I don't look like Alfred Kinsey at all, but I thought somewhere in my artist's soul, my actor's soul, I could capture something of the spirit of the man.

When you're playing someone who really lived, you carry a burden, a burden to be accurate. But it's one that you have to let go of ultimately.

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.

Actors pull from their own experiences to bring reality to the characters. I wouldn't want to play someone who's a lot like me. There would be no turning it on or off.

Actors have either got to play something that's close to them, or something that's the complete opposite.

When I did 'Jump Street', I created that character; it was all me. I walked in and was just me. I could get out of bed and walk on set and be dressed.

When you're playing a real person, there's a balance between playing the person in the script and playing the person as he was in life. You have to be respectful and true to who that person was, but at the same time tell the story in the film.

The interesting thing is, when you play a real-life character or someone based in a book, you always come up against people's preconceptions of what they have in their heads.

I'm an actor, and I'm supposed to reflect real people.