Top 100 I Know My Character Quotes
#1. I don't really have a process. I'm very much an in-the-moment actress. I suppose I just kind of wing it because I feel that as long as I know my character, I should be able to be spontaneous on set.
Sophie Turner
#2. I would sooner lose my best friend than my worst enemy. To have friends, you know, one need only be good-natured; but when a man has no enemy left there must be something mean about him.
Oscar Wilde
#3. No one of the characters in my novels has originated, so far as I know, in real life. If anything, the contrary was the case: persons playing a part in my life
the first twenty years of it
had about them something semi-fictitious.
Elizabeth Bowen
#4. When I find the character, I try to spend time with them and get to know them very well. Therefore my notes are not from the character that I had in my mind before, but are instead based on the people I've met in real life.
Abbas Kiarostami
#5. I don't happen to have a sense of humor personally, so I don't know what's funny about a character ... This happens to be a feature of my life generally.
Wallace Shawn
#6. For me the most fun of my career is to bring a little bit of irreverence to characters. And, you know, I don't think that the producers were expecting me to be as irreverent as I am.
Dean Winters
#7. I take it you know my companion?"
Oh,yes!" said Savage, his smile disappearing. "We know all about Ruby Journey. Please don't let her kill anyone important. Or set fire to anything."
Your reputation precedes you," Random said dryly to Ruby.
Simon R. Green
#8. All I want is the same opportunities as the filmmakers I grew up admiring. But you know, I've had lots of amazing opportunities to do the movies I wanted to do. If I could write my future, I'd want to keep making character-based films that can make use of my voice as a filmmaker.
Tim Story
#9. 'Veronica Mars' was my first job, and for some reason, my character changed her hairstyle halfway through the season from curly to - I don't even know why - suddenly straight.
Tessa Thompson
#10. While I know that Twitter is doing just fine with or without my 140-character contributions, I also know that people are fickle, and when using something becomes too annoying, they stop.
Rachel Sklar
#11. I know I can't make everyone happy, but I know I can do the most justice I can possibly do to a character, or any character, if I put my all into it. That's the choice you have to make.
Henry Cavill
#12. Sometimes in my class I have people come in and do monologues inspired by people they know and I always find that to be useful to do specifics about somebody and then you're actually doing a character and not doing some random old lady or something.
Amy Poehler
#13. I don't know how many times I can sit there and talk about my character or my life. It's interesting to talk about experiences in the context of something you're doing for somebody else, and particularly if you can persuade others to join you in your support.
Wendie Malick
#14. Because I know that my character is developed from my own acts and thoughts, I will guard with care all that goes into its development.
Napoleon Hill
#15. It's good fun to create an unpredictable character. When he comes into the room, I don't know what he's going to do - I have to find my way.
Martin Amis
#16. I enjoy working on a series and having a long stretch of time to get to know and connect with my cast and crew. It also gives me the ability to play a character over the span of countless hours of television.
Sasha Roiz
#17. As the new work fills my notebooks, I've come to realize that the characters in my stories were so real because I really did want to get close to people, I really did want to know them. It was just easier to do it on paper, one step removed.
Charles De Lint
#18. I find it quite easy to get in and out of character. I don't know why - I guess it's my job.
Sophie Turner
#19. I am imperfect in many things, nevertheless I want my brethren and kinsfolk to know my nature so that they may be able to perceive my soul's desire.
Saint Patrick
#20. I always felt there was something wrong with me, even when I was a child, a discomfort with my own being. I had an urge to be mean to people. I was too shy to do it properly but now I know the reasons for the faults in my character. I'm the devil.
Rhys Hughes
#21. I definitely prefer directing, hands down. I'm a lazy writer and it wasn't until I got into directing that I now have a real impetus when I'm sitting at my computer. Now that I know what it's like to get to bring characters and their stories to fruition, I'm addicted. I'm a junkie. I want more.
Coley Sohn
#22. I'll never approach a part in the same way again. Piaf taught me so much. In terms of my work, I think I'll enjoy it even more than before, because now I know that characters truly exist in their own right. I'll have a way to bring them even more intensely to life.
Marion Cotillard
#23. I don't know do I exist?
I'm two different characters, DeYtH Banger isn't even and my name it was a character created by me. But who am I??
Can I use the word "I"?, who is "I". You use "I", he use this word and she use this word, but who is "I"?
Deyth Banger
#24. Sometimes I like to think it would be nice if you just had a character, and your personal life was your personal life. My life is definitely out there, you know?
Jenna Marbles
#25. I sometimes use some personality traits to fashion part of a character. Most of my characters are composites of either people I know or people in the public eye.
Nelson DeMille
#26. Sometimes I don't know whether I'm real or whether I'm a character in one of my novels.
F Scott Fitzgerald
#27. I was very soft. I gained a lot of weight with my second child and was very on the couch. And [me manager ] said, "You know, this is a softer role [in Misteress]. She is a softer character. She's a lesbian that's always the passive half of the relationship."
Shannyn Sossamon
#28. Yuki: "What can I learn from a stupid cat like you? You didn't even know that Jason isn't really a bear. He's a character in a horror film."
Kyo: "Yeah? So what if I didn't? Like I'd waste my time watching some movie about a bear!"
Yuki: You truly are an idiot.
Natsuki Takaya
#29. Anytime I feel squeezed into a box, I just lash out. My gut reaction is to strike. It's a different character onstage: there's a whole dark sexuality that's completely different from me. You know, I don't let anybody know who I really am.
Scott Weiland
#30. I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these things do not mix?
Amy Tan
#31. Some like to start from the inside and then go to the outside. I'm the other type of actor. First, I have to know how my character looks, how he walks, how he drives, how he eats.
Patrick Huard
#32. Dogwalker is a book of fiction, with characters based on the types of people who truly exist in the world. I've seen them and know them - some of them I know really well. Although the stories are sometimes gritty and unsettling, my hope is that in the end they hit a positive note.
Arthur Bradford
#33. I find the characters in my head and the more I write about them, the better I get to know them.
Charles De Lint
#34. They always say, doing what I do for a living, write what you know and then people will respond to it. I luckily had a very charming, lovable mom who I think everybody could see bits and pieces of their mom in. All I had to do was write a character that was like my mom, and it made my life easier.
Dan Fogelman
#35. You never know when you're on a show if you're actually going to love it. For the episodes that I'm not in, I read them, but I try to just forget it, as long as it isn't important to my character. That way when the episodes air I get to watch it like a fan and actually enjoy it.
Fiona Gubelmann
#36. I think that I'm very passionate, and I know that if I decide to do a film, my character is going to take over my life.
Noomi Rapace
#37. I approach my character with the question: What would an animal think? How would an animal respond? A lot of times, it's quick action and no fear, and sometimes it's irrational fear. You don't always know.
Victoria Pratt
#38. I know there are a lot of people who like to get very involved in their characters, but I, personally, find it too involved. I just like to do it as a job - and it's my job to make it look real.
Henry Cavill
#39. 'OLTL' has now allowed me to sing through the character as Blair. If you've followed my 20-some-odd-year career, you know I am a singer.
Kassie DePaiva
#40. "Would you, do you, my dear?" rejoined the Captain ... "I don't know. It's difficult navigation. She's very hard to carry on with, my dear. You never can tell how she'll head, you see. She's full one minute, and round upon you next."
Charles Dickens
#41. I don't work with an outline, except a vague one in my head, a general idea of character, place, arc ... I'm like a composer with a symphony in their head: I can hear the music, I just have to figure out how to put it down on paper. But I don't always know where my stories are going when I begin.
Said Sayrafiezadeh
#42. I know it to be the established custom of your sex to reject a man on the first application, and perhaps you have even now said as much to encourage my suit as would be consistent with the true delicacy of the female character.
Jane Austen
#43. I've always wanted to shave my head for a role because I've wanted to play a character who had a shaved head. I don't know what the fascination is.
Elisha Cuthbert
#44. I didn't know it then, but my persistence, perseverance, and unwillingness to accept defeat when things looked all but hopeless were part of the very character traits I would need to make it through World War II alive.
Louis Zamperini
#45. Young men, of course, don't want to be guided by old back numbers, but at the same time I know that in my own case I gained a lot by studying the characters of the chiefs under whom I served from time to time. Lord Wolseley, for instance, said: "Use your common sense rather than book instructions."
Robert Baden-Powell
#46. When I'm hired just to be an actress, I don't have to worry about anything else but showing up on set, making sure I know my lines and making sure I know what I'm bringing to the character. When I'm a creator and executive producer, I have to worry about the whole thing.
Paula Garces
#47. I've got to write about my character every day. I've got to find out where he lives, what bus he catches to school, and stuff like that. You've got to know every little thing about him so when you do it, it feels natural.
Kodi Smit-McPhee
#48. I can't help moving my face - reacting - when I watch a movie, because I'm really inhabiting a character. I know this is weird, but it demonstrates what I love about cinema: it allows you to live a different life, to have a different experience, to disappear for two hours. I think it's wonderful.
Emma Stone
#49. My characters, I find them as I'm writing. It's quite incredible how fully realized they are in my mind, how many details I know about each of them.
Paul Auster
#50. I am not just my hair; I proved to myself that I am a cast of characters. I'm feeling freer to venture out of the 'look' people know me for.
Pamela Anderson
#51. Even when I'm writing in character I'm normally still writing about things I know or things that have happened to me or using that character to start an exploration of my own consciousness. Really though, any character that you can examine is just an examination of a part of your own consciousness.
Karen Walker
#52. Speaking of Twitter, I don't even know if I composed a blog entry in 2009, as I was too busy parceling my every thought into cute 140-character sound bites. I used to only worry about being pithy for a living; now some of my best lines are wasted on a free app!
Diablo Cody
#53. All of my characters are a little bit based on people I know in real life. You know when you do that you have to change the character a little bit in case your friend or your relative reads the book, because you don't want them to know you wrote about them ... They might get mad.
Meg Cabot
#54. I always want to know what's wrong with you, why you ain't smiling. That's just my character; I just love people and want to see people having a good time.
Wyclef Jean
#55. I was going to play in First Blood, but I suggested to changing it and I dropped out. I said to [Silvester] Stallone, 'You know, I almost stopped you from making millions of dollars,' because in my suggestion, I killed his character at the end of the picture .
Kirk Douglas
#56. I definitely try to play a common man in my roles so people can identify with my characters, but the truth of the matter is that it doesn't really matter what I do or my lines are, I'm still Zach Braff, and people know I'm better than them.
Zach Braff
#57. Writers get to know me very well. It always serves me in the end because I feel I have a deeper understanding of the character and sometimes they really like my ideas and they use them.
Olivia Wilde
#58. When someone says, 'I admire your character,' I never know whether the person is talking about my ethics or referring to someone in one of my books.
Stifyn Emrys
#59. Early in my career, I'd plan something out for my characters. But I've learned that if you know who your character is and you go on instinct, it won't be wrong. It's never wrong. It's just different.
Ari Millen
#60. As an actor I can sort of smell a duff note, that isn't full of that much conviction. My worst thing with directors is when I know more than them about the character.
Matt Smith
#61. I think several generations of my family had novels in the drawer. You know the montage in 'The Royal Tenenbaums' where each character has produced some sort of minor work? It was like having a magician in the household.
Garth Risk Hallberg
#62. There's a weird thing about me and characters with hair, from Ariel or Pocahontas to Tarzan with his dreadlocks and now Rapunzel ... it's like I'm trying to make up for some loss in my life, I don't know what that is.
Glen Keane
#63. When I was writing my first draft, and feeling grandiose, I e-mailed an artist/clothing designer I know and suggested we collaborate on a fashion line inspired by the outfits my characters wore. I regret that we never did that.
Heidi Julavits
#64. Sometimes minor characters are based on people I know, on friends of mine. But I'm not writing a thinly veiled version of my own life.
Cassandra Clare
#65. In my work, I want to convince people that I'm that character. If they know everything about Lesley Manville - private life, all of that stuff - it doesn't help. So the kind of anonymity I enjoy is key.
Lesley Manville
#67. I'm very kinesthetic, and when you're that way, you just feel it in your body. I know that other actors think with the logical part of their brain, but I wear my character inside my body, even when I'm away from the set.
Natassia Malthe
#68. My character is meant to know nothing about rap, and not to like it very much, but I know about it, because my kids make me listen to it. There's some rap I do like very much. I like Eminem, Blackalicious.
Harrison Ford
#69. Neither my sisters, who were nowhere near, nor I knew depression; we knew bad mood. We didn't know drinking as disease, but as character flaw. Weakness. We didn't know "dysfunctional," but we lived it. We knew that if you were miserable, you brought it on yourself. She taught us.
Frances Mayes
#70. Every film is a crapshoot. It's a mystery when a movie comes together. I've never been able to figure it out. I don't know how I make my choices. The only thing you can do is know there's something about a character that you really want to experience.
Elisabeth Shue
#71. People do not understand that what I do on stage is a character, my fans know who I truly am.
Miley Cyrus
#72. I'm not the kind of actor that would know what my character had for breakfast last Tuesday.
Liam Neeson
#73. 'The Cape' is a really good comic! They invented the whole character, and now they've built a book of 'The Cape' for the show. When I was a kid, I used to love Batman, and I loved Spider-Man. My favorite was this guy called Judge Dredd. I know they made a movie of that in the '90s.
James Frain
#74. You know, I've always wrote my best stuff when it takes me hardly any time at all. Actually I wrote ... this is actually a really funny story ... 'Ghost Of Vincent Price', I've been wanting to write a song about Vincent Price coz he's one of my favorite characters of all time.
Wednesday 13
#75. It's my only religion to work hard, and then I'm not under any pressure because I know I've done the work on the character.
Pierre Niney
#76. I don't know if I do anything to get into character: I just go with my gut.
Jamie Blackley
#77. There are still plenty of people who want to burn me at the stake for my Wonder Woman run. And I can't really blame them, you know? That was my take on the character, and when people are invested in the characters, they see them very clearly and in the way they like.
Greg Rucka
#78. I don't know ... I think I'm quite extreme ... When I act, I have to immerse myself into the character ... otherwise I can't act ... In my private life it's the same ... I think.
Doona Bae
#79. I totally agree. I hate knowing too much when I'm going to the cinema and watching as a viewer. I don't want to know that the actor has just gone through a divorce. I don't want to know that the person is an alcoholic. It just gets in the way of my pleasure of watching the character on the screen.
Keira Knightley
#80. My main problem is that over and over again, I try to get all my characters to say stuff that I think is so witty or erudite you know, so that everybody will go.
Anne Lamott
#81. Look what they did to MaCauley Culkin. The poor child. I know because I've been there. But I could say after living my life, truth will always win out. And no one can take my character away from me anymore.
Linda Blair
#82. I don't know if there is a gene for comedy, but my dad was a very funny man. He just didn't know it. He was a naturally funny character, and when my brother and I would laugh at things he said and did, he would say, 'What do you think is so funny?'
James Belushi
#83. I was stunned. I'm not sure why. I think I just never expected him to be importante enough to make any significant changes in his life, but of course, he doesn't know that he's only a minor character in my life. He's the star of his own life, and I'm the minor character. and fair enough too.
Liane Moriarty
#84. I don't know about ground rules; but I create the world that arrives with the characters or situation or voice in my head that instigates the piece, whatever form it may take.
Norman Lock
#85. If I'm doing my job as an actor, the audience knows everything I know about the character.
Liev Schreiber
#86. I remember, working on 'Lost,' I learned very quickly the way that I had to approach the material or even ask the director questions. It was always prefaced with, 'Would it be wrong for me to assume?' Because I didn't know where my character on 'Lost' was going.
Nestor Carbonell
#87. I think there's something about supernatural shows that people see and just want to put me in them! I don't know. I just finished another show - 'The Nine Lives of Chloe King,' with Skyler Samuels, who was my girlfriend in 'The Gates' - and I play another supernatural character on that show.
Colton Haynes
#88. You know how sometimes you hear a chord played on an organ and you can feel it vibrating in your bones? Sometimes when I'm writing, I can feel my bones vibrating because I'll have a thought or I'll have a character's voice in my head, and that's when I know I'm on the right track.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#89. Without my attempts in natural science, I should never have learned to know mankind such as it is. In nothing else can we so closely approach pure contemplation and thought, so closely observe the errors of the senses and of the understanding, the weak and strong points of character.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#90. I started writing morning pages just to keep my hand in, you know, just because I was a writer and I didn't know what else to do but write. And then one day as I was writing, a character came sort of strolling in and I realized, Oh my God, I don't have to be just a screenwriter. I can write novels.
Julia Cameron
#91. I'd like to be the kind of actor who is remembered for my character. You know how there are cases where even when you watch all the way through the end of a drama, you remember the actor's name, not the character's. I want my character's name to be more remembered than mine.
Jung So-min
#92. I don't remember her. But she feels special. There's this hole in my heart every time I draw her; you know, a sick sort of feeling. Like she's someone I lost.
C. Robert Cargill
#93. I guess because you study the character and you do all those things. But when it comes down to it, it's still my performance, it's still my interpretation. I'm not going to, you know, be a clone - well, I was a clone of Richard Dean Anderson!
Michael Welch
#94. In my early 20s, I didn't even know what the Groundlings was. I had no idea. But I know how to break down a script and work on the character.
Rachael Harris
#95. You risked an awful lot for someone you hardly know.' I narrow my eyes. 'THAT doesn't say much about your character. Perhaps you should wait until someone's about to be executed for a mistake YOU made.
Marie Lu
#96. My favorite actors are people who I don't know anything about, and I can project any character onto them.
Matt Bomer
#97. My brother said that at Eton, students were told caning builds character. I suppose girls are caned less because we aren't thought to have much character."
"Which is the sort of thing males say when they don't know any women.
Mary Jo Putney
#98. I always change my words in everything I do. I make the language fit, because I know the character from the inside out. Often character actors are not in a position to do that, but I do it. I don't change any cue and I never change anybody else's lines, but I make my own words fit my mouth.
James Cromwell
#99. People would be shocked to know ... that despite the nature of my TV character, I am actually a nice guy.
James Lafferty
#100. I am confident in my FAITH because I know the character of God and am assured by the love and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ
Karen Gibbs
