Youth Portrayal Quotes

It's really rare to get a teenage role that resembles something of what it's like to be a young person, that isn't a cliché or a stereotype.

I was 28 years old playing a 16-year-old. I just kept my mouth shut. I never talked about it.

We both [with Suzanne Collins ] felt strongly that you wouldn't want to age up the characters, no matter the age of the actors playing the roles. They should be playing the age that they are in the [Hunger Games] books. It would let people off the hook, if you said, "Well, instead of 12 to 18, why don't you make them 18 to 25 or 16 to 21?" If you don't stay true to the horror of the fact that they are 12 to 18, you're not doing justice to the book.

At the time I came along, Hollywood's idea of teen movies meant there had to be a lot of nudity, usually involving boys in pursuit of sex, and pretty gross overall. Either that or a horror movie. And the last thing Hollywood wanted in their teen movies was teenagers!

In movies, there are some things the French do that Americans are increasingly incapable of doing. One is honoring the complexities of youth. It's a quiet, difficult undertaking, requiring subtlety in a filmmaker and perception and patience from us.

I feel like a lot of teenagers have typically been played by 25 year olds, and even 30 year olds. It's nice that I'm playing a little bit more to my age, although from 15 to 19 are pretty progressive years.

I just don't think I can write someone drastically younger than me.

People talk about writing convincing teenagers like it's a really clever thing to do, but it comes incredibly naturally to me. Which, of course, is slightly a worry.

I really love playing a character that's a little younger than me, to be honest. Because even if it's just three years, I can bring perspective into it.

Usually for a movie, if you want a 13-year-old, you get a 16-year-old who looks 13, because 13-year-olds dont have that level of self-awareness.

I couldn't imagine playing someone young now; it would be so boring.

There's a joke in my family that I'm going to make a career out of playing other people's younger selves.

I've read all of Shakespeare and practiced a lot of lines. ... I am going to do Juliet first. Don't laugh. What, with what makeup, costume and camera can do, my acting will create a Juliet who is 14, an innocent virgin.

I love it when I get to play characters that are much younger than I am in real life. I feel it's an advantage.

What I loved about 'Summer' was that they were these four bright kids with a wonderful future. In a way, she was the one with the brains, and then you have the beauty queen and the jock and the introvert.

I have been really lucky to play roles younger than myself for most of my career.

Something that bothered people about 'Dawson's Creek' but as a writer, I kind of dug: writing those kids as though they were college grad students. It was fun and liberating and made for a true sort of writer's show. It was a fun year for me, because I got to get out of debt with my first TV job, and I learned a ton.

I see so few scripts just because, for whatever reason, there just aren't that many good scripts with a young, teenaged girl. So it's always been sporadic. People don't know what to do when writing a story with teens that takes place now - they think you have to make a bunch of references to Facebook.

I am for anything that makes teens visible in an honest way... in other words, anything that represents them the way they are, positively or negatively.