Actors will say, 'My character wouldn't say that.' Who said it was your character?
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I have never been one of those actors who say, 'Oh, my character wouldn't do this,' or 'My character never wears an orange shirt,' or any of the number of inane things I've heard on movie sets throughout my career.
As an actor, the biggest compliment you can get, in my book is for someone to believe that you're the character.
Frequently over the years, people have thought that they know me. Every character actor has this story, I'm sure. It goes like this: 'Um, do you play soccer?' 'Did you go to such and such church?' 'I knew you when you were with so and so... ' Then I go, 'Well, sorry...' and then they say, 'Wait a minute. Are you an actor?'
The biggest compliment I can ever get as an actor is to have someone say, 'We didn't recognize you.'
I don't think of myself as a character actress - that's become a phrase which means you've had it.
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 love playing characters, so I'm always telling my agents, 'Don't worry if the character description is something you think I'm not. Let me try to be that person.'
Every actor-performer says this, and it sounds so irritating, but I'm not the most outgoing person.
I like writing characters that seem different from one another. So if you were to hypothetically look at a bunch of lines from books I've written, just out of context, hopefully you would be able to determine who said what. That's the goal, anyway. I try to strongly differentiate through dialogue.
With any actor, if you know your character well enough, you'll know pretty much what he would say under any circumstance, or whatever situation might rear its head.