Out Of Character Quotes

#1. Everyone has to act out of character sometimes. It's like taking your clothes off: you feel free without your character but very naked, unprotected. Unfinished. So you get dressed again- you put on yourself-and then you know who you are.

Jan Siegel

#2. I did 'Shameless' on Showtime, and I felt like I really tried to go super-method with that, and it would just make my days really hard to get in and out of character.

Laura Slade Wiggins

#3. In real life, we do things out of character, constantly. A couple of days ago, my shoes were hurting, so I walked barefoot through New York. Someone who has known me my whole life would think that was so out of character. But I did it because of the circumstances.

Allison Williams

#4. Plot grows out of character. If you focus on who the people in your story are, if you sit and write about two people you are getting to know better every day, something is bound to happen.

Anne Lamott

#5. The point was - he wasn't acting. It was as if he'd forgotten how! Jack still knew his lines, but he was out of character ... Jack had stopped acting. He was just Jack Burns - the real Jack Burns at last.

John Irving

#6. People act out of character when they're in pain.

Sarah Jio

#7. There is not a single soul that jealousy looks good on. Nobody! It looks ugly on everybody and it makes us act ugly - it makes us act out of character.

Beth Moore

#8. I've read all the 'Game of Thrones' books many times over, so I sometimes find it easier being on set, because it can be hard to get out of character.

Emilia Clarke

#9. You have to impress him! Be independent and plucky, but often do things that are moronic and out of character!

Alan Moore

#10. I'm a bug on acting, which distinguishes Second City from a lot of other revues. It comes from the character, the behavior, and not from the jokes. I don't think jokes are funny. Humor comes out of character and out of situations the character is in.

Bernard Sahlins

#11. I never like to go out of character when filming starts. I fear that if I do, I might not be able to pick it up again.

Richard C. Armitage

#12. Val's answer was as out of character for him as his presence here. I don't know nothing about birthing puppies, Miss Scarlett, but I can cleave the head off a Daimon without breaking a sweat.

Sherrilyn Kenyon

#13. The shreiking fight or the out-of-character insult endures forever, while the daily sweetness dissolves like sugar in water.

Mary Karr

#14. I like making fun of myself; I don't want to make fun of other people, so I don't mind doing something out of character that some people might not expect me to do.

Eli Manning

#15. He didn't ask what I was thinking, which was out of character for him. I guessed that meant that he was just as nervous as I suddenly was.

Stephenie Meyer

#16. Neither parenting, Christian education, heritage, nor fine church involvement can alter anyone's essential sin nature. To lie, make self-centered choices, be destructive, or be deeply hurtful to oneself or others may be "out of character," but it is not outside of any human being's nature.

Rick Horne

#17. Novels usually evolve out of 'character.' Characters generate stories, and the shape of a novel is entirely imagined but should have an aesthetic coherence.

Joyce Carol Oates

#18. A bad laugh is a laugh for the sake of a laugh that's out of character.

Scott Ellis

#19. James Franco is a Method actor. I respect Method actors, but he never snapped out of character. Whenever we'd have to get in the ring for boxing scenes, and even during practice, the dude was full-on hitting me.

Tyrese Gibson

#20. For me, plot always comes out of character, so I had to be sure of my characters.

Greg Rucka

#21. Thing is, I'm a funny actor, but I'm not good at being funny. I'm going to ramble for a second: I'm an actor who can make things funny in the moment, like in stakes or in circumstances or out of character.

Matthew Lillard

#22. Sometimes I forget what I look like and I do something out of character, such as sing shepherd tunes in Aramaic while I'm waiting in line at Starbucks, but the nice bit about living in urban America is that people tend to either ignore eccentrics or move to the suburbs to escape them.

Kevin Hearne

#23. totally out of character if

P.F. Ford

#24. You do believe I didn't do it, right?" For all I knew, he did think I was guilty and was just trying to help anyways. It wouldn't have been out of character.
"I believe my sweet daughter is capable of murder," he said at last. "But not this one.

Richelle Mead

#25. In real life people do occasionally act out of character or do things we wouldn't normally expect them to do. In fiction, there should be a good reason for a character to do something outside of the ordinary.

Craig Hart

#26. Extending his senses, Lorkin tried again to hear his mother's surface thoughts. What he picked up seemed too out of character, however. He must be imagining it. Though ... it was also odd that he would imagine his mother thinking such a string of curse words.

Trudi Canavan

#27. I close my eyes an lean into Ernest, smelling bourbon and soap, tobacco and damp cotton - and everything about this moment is so sharp and lovely, I do something completely out of character and just let myself have it.

Paula McLain

#28. How many out-of-character things did I need to do, I wondered, before the world rearranged itself around me?

Ben Lerner

#29. This is not a showman's job. I will not step out of character.

Herbert Hoover

#30. Out of character to be so obvious. You need to be more subtle. Locate a partially blocked artery in his brain, then just pinch it off. Bang, he's down and it's over."
- Mara Jade Skywalker

Michael A. Stackpole

#31. 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

#32. If a person acts out of character, then there's one thing you can be sure of: there is something wrong. I have seen this so many times I have lost count.

Alexander McCall Smith

#33. I get some acting jobs. I like it other than the constant slipping in and out of character.

Andy Kindler

#34. It is out of character for a country that prides itself on intellectual freedom to put the education of its young in the hands of the state.

David Kelley

#35. He looked down and did something quite out of character for him: he took hold of Shmuel's tiny hand in his and squeezed it tightly.
"You're my best friend, Shmuel," he said. "My best friend for life.

John Boyne

#36. This is what a total breakdown must be, I though. You find yourself standing somewhere you should't be, doing something so out of character that you wonder if you've become someone else entirely. You've lost the plot, taken a wrong turning, jumped into a train whose destination is total lunacy

Gilly Macmillan

#37. You're breaking out of character, again.

Dave Eggers

#38. I've flown out of character so many times. In that sense I've been lucky, because I've been given the liberty to do just about anything I've wanted to do in my lifetime.

June Carter Cash

#39. I like a naturalism to my dialogue and my comedy. I would rather have a few jokes sail by that might be more subtle than have every single joke hit hard. I would rather the comedy come out of character as opposed to feeling forced. Even if you're giving some laughs up for it.

Jon Favreau

#40. It's really interesting that whenever you do something that is so out of character, like having an emotional outburst, that you don't get in trouble.

Beth Henley

#41. Did the rhythm of the train on the tracks somehow unravel her and make her behave out of character? Was she altered in transit, when her feet were not upon the ground?

John Irving

#42. Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character; it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so.

W. H. Auden

#43. Cade Winston, by drinking this shot, you hereby swear to do something out of character tonight. Should you fail, you'll be cused to a lifetime filled with premature ejaculation.'
'Seriously, man?'
He held up his hands and laughed, 'Hey, the alcohol gods giveth and they taketh away.

Cora Carmack

#44. Catholic schools carry out a great mission, to serve God by building knowledge and character ... By teaching the word of God, you prepare your students to follow a path of virtue.

George W. Bush

#45. And at NYU, I went to the Atlantic Theater Company, and they have two main points. One of them is to always be active in something instead of just feeling it. And the other is figuring out your character.

Elizabeth Olsen

#46. If we think of the novel and the epic ... The difference lies in the fact that the important thing about the epic is a hero
a man who is a pattern for all men. While, as Mencken pointed out, the essence of most novels lies in the breaking down of a man, in the degeneration of character.

Jorge Luis Borges

#47. Emotionally and physically, I'm an extremely fragile creation of God; while the strong will and character are formed out of the necessity to protect the vulnerable core.

Sahara Sanders

#48. My dad says that when I was two or three I used to go out dressed as a different character every day. I remember thinking it was perfectly normal to wear different coloured shoes and carry a pink umbrella. But now I've got a goddaughter of that age; I realise it's not normal at all.

Alice Eve

#49. There is a great deal more to be got out of things than is generally got out of them, whether the thing be a chapter of the Bible or a yellow turnip, and the marvel is that those who use the most material should so often be those that show the least result in strength or character.

George MacDonald

#50. My thing was always more character-driven comedies, not sketch comedy - not that there's not room for both or one isn't enjoyable, just my personal taste, I like movies that comedy comes from out of flaws of people, things that are uncomfortable, out of tragedy.

Vince Vaughn

#51. With big, emotional roles it's very easy, especially if you've grown up in the American school of acting, to exploit your own pain. You have to be careful about that, because 9 times out of 10, your pain is not appropriate to the character.

Laura Linney

#52. He's meant to be that classic Homer, Ulysses, Hercules - a character who goes out or has some gift of some kind. He goes on a journey of discovery and part of that is falling into darkness - the temptations of life.

Robert Redford

#53. I think the business of writing a great deal of it is the business of paying attention to your characters, to the world they live in, to the story you have to tell, but just a kind of deep attention and out of that if you pay attention properly the story will tell you what it needs.

Salman Rushdie

#54. Each week the machine is spitting out a number for a new person or a new world within New York that you get to know. And the idea from the beginning was that some of the characters would stick around and become part of the lives of the show, and the world of the show itself will continue to grow.

Jonathan Nolan

#55. You want everyone to be a full character. No one is just evil, or very few people are, hopefully. They're characters, so you want to flush them out. You've got to show all sides of them. There is definitely an antagonistic relationship between guards and prisoners, and I do think it flares up.

Jenji Kohan

#56. I'm not much of a preparer. I think sometimes as an actor you need to go out and learn some skills, but in terms of preparation for understanding the character, it's all on the page, and if it's not on the page, you're in trouble.

William H. Macy

#57. I try mainly to just focus on character and what my character's point of view is, with each person, and try to figure out story.

Katie Cassidy

#58. The question I am most often asked is how do I find my ideas? The answer is I don't. Ideas find me. A character in history will suddenly step right out of the past and demand a book. Generally, people don't bother to speak to me unless there's a good chance that I'll take them on.

Jean Fritz

#59. I think acting has helped me come out of my shell because when I play a character, I can't be self-conscious.

Joan Cusack

#60. The function of a newspaper in a democracy is to stand as a sort of chronic opposition to the reigning quacks. The minute it begins to out-whoop them it forfeits its character and becomes ridiculous.

H.L. Mencken

#61. There's a lot of romanticisation of the intuitive actor and method acting and all kinds of notions about getting inside a character and coming out from there.

Edward Norton

#62. Sometimes I can't get out of the character because the story is very intense.

Diana Krall

#63. Woody Allen - nobody has been a better joke teller than him - and even in his great films, it's always coming out of the character. If you don't have that, jokes are just empty and I think that people rely too much on jokes.

Brett Gelman

#64. Is as if the music is another character or as if it was a part of this great opera. I also through about this project as a structure or as a sculpture made out of colors, rhythm, characters, and brush strokes, but with every single one of these always supporting one another.

Alex Abreu

#65. In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character.

P. J. O'Rourke

#66. I'm not the kind of player to see out my time and sit with my bum on the bench too much. I want to be involved. That's my character.

Frank Lampard

#67. Rehearsals are set up so that you find out all the nuances about your character. You never want to beat yourself up. It's about finding the right direction, and most of the time, the right direction is not what you think is the right direction. That's why the director's there: to guide you there.

Djimon Hounsou

#68. The growth of the imagination demands windows-windows through which we can look out at the world and windows through which we can look into ourselves. The old stories were windows in just this way.

Katherine Paterson

#69. What really sells a fight, and any kind of action, is the performance of it. If someone is uncomfortable or uncertain about doing action because they're too concerned about their safety or about being right, it pulls them out of being that character, in that situation.

Zoe Bell

#70. Yeah, and the language the "we" has, and the character the "we" has. Because that was the part of the book that I didn't plan out, but the part that I was most curious about as I was writing. You know what you're doing, but you're sometimes still sort of curious as you're writing it.

Chang-rae Lee

#71. With 'Moreau,' it's been particularly confusing because I started out being the writer of the screenplay and then trying to be the director, then being moved from being the director and having to become the dog extra, it makes some kind of sense to suddenly become a character in the story.

Richard Stanley

#72. A lot of times, scripts are written so the character is all one way. Even with 'Bringing Out the Dead,' the character was written a little more generic.

Ving Rhames

#73. I think what I reacted to so strongly when I first saw 'Pinocchio' was that I identified with the character so strongly. The movie takes you on a whole journey, a rollercoaster of emotions, and that sometimes means some very scary places. But in the end, it comes out okay.

Chris Buck

#74. When I can't get the character out of my head, and I'm in my bedroom and I start to actually act out the scenes that I've read in a script, I think okay, I really want to do this.

Saoirse Ronan

#75. When I was on 'One Life to Live,' I always wanted to delve into my character, Layla, to find out why she was the black sheep of the family. I so wanted to have some edge. I have no idea why there was a reluctance to do that or why we so rarely see it.

Tika Sumpter

#76. I think 'The Searcher' is a departure from my first because it's less grounded in religion and is far more rooted in the mythic tradition: more of an existential thriller where the main character is actually the central mystery, and his journey is all about trying to figure himself out.

Simon Toyne

#77. The beauty of the character is that it's like camouflage. It's the best costume ever. I rarely get recognized as Pornstache when I'm out in public. Most people recognize me as the Law & Order guy, when I'm out in public.

Pablo Schreiber

#78. I think we take for granted police officers and detectives that walk into some pretty heinous situations, and they really have to be very brave. So I love playing a character that's very brave - someone that kind of dives in the fire to figure out what's happened.

George Eads

#79. One's character is set at an early age. The choices you make now will affect you for the rest of your life. I hate to see you swim out so far you can't swim back.

Wendelin Van Draanen

#80. Sometimes when you do a part, the wall between you and the characters can be very porous. You can sort of move in and out of your character's persona and being. And that just couldn't happen on this one because of working with him.

Kyra Sedgwick

#81. No one knows his true character until he has run out of gas, purchased something on the installment plan and raised an adolescent.

Marcelene Cox

#82. The process of creation goes on all the time. When I get through, I feel I know what the character will do in every situation. But the building up of the part is not mechanical or deliberate. It grows out of the text.

Donald Pleasence

#83. The only way of really finding out a man's true character is to play golf with him. In no other walk of life does the cloven hoof so quickly display itself.

P.G. Wodehouse

#84. Even if you're specific about the character of the song, it's more exciting to place them, juxtapose them in such a way as to make an adventure out of the sequence of the songs.

Robert Wyatt

#85. I've worked out a Ninja Replacement Score for novels. It's basically the number of characters that need to be replaced by ninjas to make the book good.

Janni Lee Simner

#86. Most of my stories are ideas in action. In other words, I get a concept, and I let it run away. I find a character to act out the idea. And then the story takes care of itself.

Ray Bradbury

#87. When I connect to my soul, project it into another # character , and then bring it to the stage or to a film
that has always been for me the great joy of # acting . It's been as if my soul kind of leaps out of my body and is able to be free and dance around.

Kyra Sedgwick

#88. What comes out of you when you are squeezed is what is inside of you.

Wayne W. Dyer

#89. I think a few of my most visible roles are crazy or peppy girls, but I've played a lot of characters who are soldiers, or fighters, or meditative characters, and a lot of this stuff hasn't come out.

Ashly Burch

#90. Character is destiny. For the cronic do-gooder, the happy-go-lucky sociopath, the dysfunctional family, under the gun everyone diverts to who they are. We may hunger to map out a new course, but for most of us, the lines have been drawn since we were 5.

Mary McCormack

#91. I like to be able to play a character and act out a lot of things which I can't or don't do in my normal everyday life.

Leonardo DiCaprio

#92. Knowledge is an attitude, a passion, actually an illicit attitude. For the compulsion to know is like dipsomania, erotomania, and homicidal mania, in producing a character that is out of balance. It is not at all that the scientist goes after the truth.

Soren Kierkegaard

#93. When you're doing an out-and-out comedy, the notion of preparing for a character - I hope I don't reveal too much of myself here - but, uh, no, I'm not doing anything.

Will Ferrell

#94. I write poems about relationships, love relationships, and I'm not able to do that all the time. I could go two years without writing poems, and then write a dozen. Having a novel to work on, with the intricate puzzle of character and plot to work out, is satisfying for the time there is no poetry.

May Sarton

#95. When I sign on to a television show [Mistresses], I have to love that show and character so much, but this was in and out, for seven episodes. And it was nice to be able to make some money again because I hadn't work in a year and a half. There were a lot of pluses.

Shannyn Sossamon

#96. Being on the run wasn't fun, but it was something I had to do. I was actually working in legitimate jobs. I wasn't living on people's credit cards. I was living like a character out of a movie. It was performance art.

Kevin Mitnick

#97. In the case of 'Sweet Tooth,' and in the case of a lot of stuff I do, it all starts with the image. It may be something I sketch in my sketchbooks - something that reoccurs in the sketchbooks. Eventually, a character or story line starts to grow out of that.

Jeff Lemire

#98. The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.

Leon Trotsky

#99. I think we've all been kind of ... everyone's been hurt, everyone's felt loss, everyone has exultation, everyone has a need to be loved, or to have lost love, so when you play a character, you're pulling out those little threads and turning them up a bit.

Mark Ruffalo

#100. I don't believe you just create a character out of thin air, there's always something of yourself you bring.

Sean Bean