Character Interpretation Quotes

I love Elektra. I really have a special place in my heart for her. It was very enjoyable for me to discover her and to adapt her for this project and bring myself to this character. So I have a special spot for her.

We actors can't say every line as if it has weight, but what we want to do is be true to the meaning of each line, whatever it is. Even the lines that are throwaway may come back later.

When you're playing a character in a book, there's already a lot of pressure because all of the millions of people who have read the series have been able to envision and become very attached to the characters.

The hardest achievement in acting - in my opinion, anyway - is nailing a role that absolutely nobody else could have played. Pacino owned Michael Corleone... but DeNiro could have owned it as well. Who else, though, but Val Kilmer could have nailed Jim Morrison? Does anyone besides Will Ferrell pull off Ron Burgundy?

I have seen Hollywood artistes like Al Pacino, Tom Cruise and Tim Burton doing theatre and Broadway shows. Cinema actors tend to go back to theatre because it gives them an opportunity to reinvent themselves.

Rambo isn't violent. I see Rambo as a philanthropist.

The Tony Stark I grew up with wasn't as snappy and as quippy as Downey Jr. made him, but now I only think of his performance.

On one level, all of the characters in 'Game of Thrones' grow out of George R.R. Martin's imagination. Therefore they are his. As long as they are in the novels they are his. But the moment they step forth onto the TV screen, they become filtered through the showrunners. In a business sense, it's the same way with comics.

The way I approach acting when there's a real life character, it's sort of like a Venn diagram. What I come up with is some amalgam of the two of us.

People like Superman, The Flash - they just feel limited in who they are and what you can do with them because everyone knows who they are and what they do. Someone like Animal Man feels very open to interpretation.

In the acting game, you spend a long time fighting against what the director perceives you to be. And half the time the directors don't know.

I like to play characters, man. I almost don't even think of them as good guys or bad guys. I know that's a hard thing to realize, but I really just think of them as characters.

I will always find a defense for characters, and that's why it's fun playing characters that are morally ambiguous, or are at least perceived superficially as being problematic.

I saw several actresses play the part. I did not in fact, as far as I know, do anything that any of the other actresses did. I don't think actresses do that. I think that what we do is we see a role as a role, we don't see it as a person. We look at the role and think, 'What can I, as an actor, bring to that part?

Alan Moore's first choice to be the Comedian... was Burt Reynolds. But I never saw myself as Burt Reynolds; I saw myself as Edward Blake.

Ultimately, physical resemblance isn't as important as whether this person can bring this character to life in a way that's compelling and makes me care about what happens to them.

I think Ryan Gosling is a really great actor who's meticulous about his work. And I'd love to have the guts that Johnny Depp has to actually go outside the box on a character. When he plays a character, he plays it in a way that nobody else would.

When I was playing Gandalf, I didn't think, 'Oh my dear, I'm playing a 7,000 year old wizard,' because I've never met one, and I don't know what they're like.

The first thing I do with any script is read it and try to visualize if I can play the character - if I can feel what the character's feeling.

I dont like any of them, because they don't read the books. In Kiss Me Deadly my story is better than his story. Anthony Quinn played in The Lond Wait and he didn't read the book either.

You draw on whatever's relevant to the part you're playing; it makes it more personal.

I never even think about the physicality of roles, until honestly I get the gig and I think, 'OK, now what do I have to do in this one?' Like, I approach it thinking more about the character - do I respond to it? Is it something I think I can play? Does it seem like it'll be fun?

Playing Mark Antony in 'Rome' will always be a favourite of mine because he was such an outrageously big and interesting character to play. Also, the fact that we were able, with that character, to find out and present the public with a biography of that man that had not been really seen before.

If you're a song writer, it's a bit different because you are expressing your own words, feelings, perspective. As an actor, you are doing your best to interpret and express the root of the character's perspective which have been established by the writer. There are parallels of performing. Tapping into your own emotional piggy bank. The biggest commonality is if you are successful in either industry, you get free snacks all the time.

I believe each character you do, you should add your touch and uniqueness to it.