Background Character Quotes

#1. She might get lonely at times. But that was to be expected. The only way to stop those feelings was to live a life devoted to others. That was her true purpose in life. She was a mere background character in other people's lives.

Lily George

#2. I was not put here to be a background character in someone else's movie!

Breaux Greer

#3. Consider yourself a functional character in someone else's novel - a background character - a person on the street - that's the perspective ...

John Geddes

#4. I come from a theater background, so I always like to dissect the scene and try to get some hint about what the author was trying to get at. I still look up the meaning of the name of the character to see if there are any clues in that.

Adina Porter

#5. Sometimes it's less about the character and more about the story for me. I'll play a rock in the background if I think the story is fantastic and I can be a part of it somehow. That's what I look for.

Zoe Kravitz

#6. Well first of all you have to make the character strong so that people can follow that. And then hopefully that character can integrate with the background of the social situation that people can recognize.

Oliver Stone

#7. The soul is the observer who interprets and makes choices in a confluence of relationships. These relationships provide the background, setting, characters, and events that shape the stories of our lives.

Deepak Chopra

#8. I definitely think the formula to making my character seem sweet is to let him act like a jerk, give him a redeeming moment, and have a sweet song playing over the background when it happens.

Jim Jefferies

#9. My fiction is almost always inspired by a character's need or desire to rise above him- or herself. No one is perfect and some of us have much adversity in our lives; it is those people who struggle to rise above their nature or background that I find the most interesting and heroic.

Robert Crais

#10. I understand that I may make mistakes with characters who don't share my own background, but I commit to doing my best.

Kelley Armstrong

#11. I just don't ever want to play the girlfriend. You know, the supporting character in the background who just sort of comes in and goes, "Oh, shucks." It's just a boring character.

Kristen Bell

#12. I never liked the whole idea of [creating your own] background, if it's not pertinent, where the character lived as a child, and who I was and how I was. That never helped me in any way, so I don't even do that.

Maria Bello

#13. In a one-woman show, there must be compelling material that you adore. In both of these there are conversations with you and another character. My Second City (improvisation) background comes in very handy for accent and body posture.

Valerie Harper

#14. I do write long, long character notes - family background, history, details of appearance - much more than will ever appear in the novel. I think this is what lifts a book from that early calculated, artificial stage.

Anne Tyler

#15. I create my own backstory regardless of if I'm told something about the background or not. There's always more that you can develop in your head that makes a character more layered, more honest.

Regina King

#16. Nothing about character is hereditary. Everyone, regardless of social background, financial status, race, or sex, enters the world with an equal opportunity to become a person of great or petty character.

Michael Josephson

#17. Every life of a character is within a context. If I write detached from a social and political background, my story looks like a soap opera where everybody is indoors, not working and living off their emotions.

Isabel Allende

#18. I am super-proud to have a sort of famous character in my background that if you're a certain age, he was probably a part of your youth. I think that's pretty cool.

Adam Brody

#19. When I first started, especially because I got the Critics' Choice before I'd released an album, there was a lot of scrutiny on what my character was, what my background was, what colour my hair was. I fought quite hard for the music to overtake the personality aspect.

Florence Welch

#20. Wallace was just the sort who blends into the background of the school photo (or the greeting line at the cotillion) but who, with the passage of time, increasingly stands out against the lapses in character around him.

Amor Towles

#21. I like to stay within the context of the character's background. If he's a cop, I have to make sure the audience is convinced that this person, a cop, can do only so much without a gun.

Donnie Yen

#22. Pres. Lyndon Johnson was a middle-aged man of smalltown America, both a Westerner and a Southerner, and except where politics had demonstrably forced his growth-as on the question of civil rights-he functioned like most men, as a product of his background.

Tom Wicker

#23. One of the things I liked about my character in 'Run' is that she can just disappear into the background if she wants, which is what I'm like.

Katie Leung

#24. Perhaps because my background is theatrical, I have a great affinity with the classics. Hamlet has always been a character of great interest to me and a character I would really love to play. Or a character in a Tennessee Williams play, maybe Tom in 'The Glass Menagerie.'

Adhir Kalyan

#25. There are vast differences between scripts and stories, of course. Few fiction writers would want to give up the opportunity to explore how the minds of their characters work, or to set aside the opportunity to provide necessary background exposition in a succinct fashion.

Les Standiford

#26. To us he's like... like scenery, in the background of our lives, but for him, he's the main character. He has a life and a job and a whole story. He's a real person. And to him, we're the background scenery.

Dan Wells

#27. My whole background is character acting: weird costumes, fat suits, playing men, playing animals - I've never played anyone with whom there's any overlapping Venn diagram.

Allison Williams

#28. For me, the challenge of a period film is that, unlike a contemporary film where the character can be very free-form when it comes to the acting, there's a burden to acting in a period film because you have to stay within the character's historical background and the gestures of certain periods.

Donnie Yen

#29. I don't think there is a single sentence in this whole book [East of Eden] that does not either develop character, carry on the story or provide necessary background.

John Steinbeck

#30. So if you want to have a great video game-based movie you have to keep the mood of the game, use the normal character setup - but you have to flesh out the story and provide more background for the characters.

Uwe Boll

#31. I don't think that you necessarily need a certain type of background to take on roles. You see actors from very, very privileged backgrounds playing working class characters and vice-versa. I don't think your background limits you as to what you can do.

Daniel Radcliffe

#32. Beautifully drawn, solid, compelling characters against a background so real and scary I left the lights on all night. It was great!

P.N. Elrod

#33. In determing "the right people," the good-to-great companies placed greater weight on character attributes than on specific educational background, practical skills, specialized knowledge, or work experience.

James C. Collins

#34. I don't cry. Well, you know, I think coming from an acting background that's really helped me because I more than anyone know that an actor creates a character.

Joanna Kerns

#35. It's not enough to picture their outward appearance. Give them a background and sphere of influence.

Jordan Dane

#36. A person's personality can only be known by learning about his background, because this is where he generates his character. Your character for instant was shaped back when you were a small child, and that applies to everybody else.

Jack Roberts

#37. Typically, when you look for role models, you want someone who has your interests and came from the same background. Well, look how restricting that is. What people should do is take role models a la carte. If there's someone whose character you appreciated, you respect that trait.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

#38. I've played my fair share of unpleasant character, and I have to tell you that you sleep better when you're playing fun characters. You think you don't take it home with you, at the end of the filming day, but subconsciously, there's something floating around in the background there.

James D'arcy

#39. You don't do background music the way a lot of more conventional films do. The music is often kind of a character in your films to the extent that sometimes you stop and watch someone perform a song.

Wes Anderson

#40. The discipline of desire is the background of character.

John Locke

#41. 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.

Sophia Bush

#42. There's no tipping point where you become what you are. Character development starts when you're growing up. Your socioeconomic background contributes. The attitude that gets you through some communities doesn't work in corporate America. It's not an excuse, but it does help explain

Maurice Clarett

#43. I come from a theater background, so usually, at the start, you know what happens and where the character goes and everything. But with TV, it's really unpredictable.

Kimiko Glenn

#44. I always devise a background so that it makes what your character goes through logical and keeps up the continuity.

Dexter Fletcher

#45. Exposition has legitimate uses. It's the most efficient way to summarize background information, including necessary information about a character's history. It can set the stage well for a major dramatized event.

Nancy Kress

#46. If character is the foreground of fiction, setting is the background, and as in a painting's composition, the foreground may be in harmony or in conflict with the background.

Janet Burroway

#47. Whenever I have had to write fiction, I've always had to invent a character who roughly has my background.

V.S. Naipaul