Pastoral Resources

I get to experiment with a lot of looks with my character so that's really fun for me. It's like getting to paint a new canvas everyday.

In the initial season of a show, you're figuring out your character and their life and their background and you're putting together all the chapters of the book.

Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.

Not to oversimplify it, somebody once said a good rule of thumb in interpreting a character is to find the good in the bad people that you portray and the bad in the good.

I've always thought of myself as more of a character actress. I've tried to do different things, but I've always been under the radar and that's how I like it. I've been really blessed to work this long and I just hope I continue to get better and better and better and better.

Hollywood didn't know if I was an actor or a nut or if I was this crazy character I was playing. I had developed an image of being a little bit unusual, different and wild.

Character, I am sure, lies in the genes.

I get sent a lot of scripts which feature him as a kind of all-purpose Victorian literary character and really understand little, if anything, about him, his life or his books.

You're being cast for your acting ability. It's not based on the way your body functions. If you're playing a lead in a movie, it's for that character and they'll tailor it to you. In a dance company, you have to fit in a definite mold.

I think I may have become an actor to hide from myself. You can escape into a character.

Well, I am a lot like my dad, and the character of Ted is based on my dad.

I think being mean to people in high school is healthy. It's sort of like you're in this situation with all these other kids and sometimes you need to get your aggression out. And if you'd had people be mean to you before, it really does build character.

I try to bring elements of my own personality to every character I've played, but I think I'm pretty similar to the character I'm playing now. The biggest departure would have to have been Freaks and Geeks Sara, who was this sort of subordinate and shy girl.

I'm in four different films this year, and I have four different accents. I sound different in every film. You have to love a character to play it well, and change in my work is what I want.

The darker the character, the more interesting.

I don't mind playing the same character, but if it's not well done, then I'm not interested.

In Halloween, I viewed the characters as simply normal teenagers. Laurie, Jamie Lee's character, was shy and somewhat repressed. And Michael Myers, the killer, is definitely repressed. They have certain similarities.

Having the Stitch character, the villain that becomes a hero, coming from outer space, it took a very difficult and complex story and put it into a simpler, kinder time.

What I have in common with the character in 'Truman' is this incredible need to please people. I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started.

Usually I'm frustrated when I look at my films and I don't believe that I've made a real transformation beyond my usual sets of gestures and expressions. I still have this nagging feeling that it's me, that I didn't create a unique character.