Acting Complexity Quotes

I think playing a negative character is more difficult and challenging, since you have a lot to work on, and you have to put a lot of efforts.

Doing comedy and romance is easy, if I compare it with playing the role of a real-life person.

Playing Batman is an actor's challenge. First, it's different; then, you have to reach a multi-level audience. The kids take it straight, but for adults, we have to project it further.

Anna Magnani, Sophia Loren, Meryl Streep - I love actresses that are strong and fragile at the same time. They bring complexity to their roles.

I like playing characters with as many emotions as possible. I'd love to play a really crazy person - someone truly out of her mind.

I get to play some zany, multilayered, very complex individuals.

First of all, I would shoot myself if I ever had to play straight-forward characters that really don't have much of a past. Maybe it's just that I'm not a good enough actor to have to embellish, but I like having these really, really rich roles to play.

Sometimes when you're playing a very intense character, a disturbed character, you find other layers. That's much more interesting to me, rather than just playing 'intense.' I find it too boring.

I continue to be known as a guy that plays really complex, three-dimensional characters.

Four directors through their own interpretation created four different characters. And I had to play them in a fairly short period of time.

When you're doing those operation scenes, you not only have to be on top of the dialogue and the rhythm of the dialogue and what's happening dramatically, but you've got to technically get the rhythm right, so that everything is fitting with the dialogue at the right time. And you're performing the operation to the audience that's watching it. Thackery has to present it, as well. In some ways, that's the most challenging.

Flashy characters are more entertaining to people because you get it. You don't have to work to get someone who says what they mean and says what they think. They're out there. It's harder to play a quiet character because everything happens in their stream of consciousness.

Crazy is so hard to play, there's nothing you can really tell an actor.

I love character roles. I'm happier in them. I look for roles that have some kind of complexity.

With a role like Hedda Gabler, which is incredibly complicated, you often feel that you haven't even scratched the surface the first time around, so you relish the opportunity to do it again, particularly with an ensemble of actors and the company we assembled. But when you do that in films you somehow have to make some attempt to uncross people's arms and you have to justify why you're doing it.

I don't mind playing somebody who's not likable, or makes the audience feel slightly conflicted.

every actor knows that tragedy, being linear and inevitable, is taxing - but comedy, which depends on the element of surprise, is the hardest act of all.

Whenever I do anything, even the most simple character, I need to twist it somehow, make it more challenging, in terms of psychology and storytelling. I can't just do it straight.

I think what's most fun is playing someone who's sort of selfish and in a lot of ways unlikeable, but there's this really big heart underneath it that you get little glimpses of.

If you discover that a role isn't complex, you can speak to somebody about it and they'll help you push it when you're on set.

I don't really have preferred roles except those with some complexity.

I don't play bad guys. I think that's why I keep getting cast as bad guys: because I don't want to play bad guys. I want to play human beings that struggle with life.

Modeling is great because I don't have lines to memorize. But I find acting much more challenging - which is a good thing!

It's funny when you know you're playing two characters and you're aware of how you have to play each one into your performance of the other. You're constantly at the back of your mind thinking and it all gets a bit confusing.

I'm not interested in playing the villain as a loud caricature, one-dimensional character. I am trying to humanise evil. If you see my character in 'Aurangzeb,' I am not trying to act evil.