I was a little bit wary of playing Nicholas. In the script, which I think is true of the novel and the film, he's the only character not singing and dancing in a musical style. Playing someone who is the personification of good is a little difficult.
Confidence isn't optimism or pessimism, and it's not a character attribute. It's the expectation of a positive outcome.
You never saw Peter Sellers the actor trying to make you laugh. All he was doing was the character. What I'm saying is that I don't think you should know you're in a movie. I don't like it when actors are winking at the audience and saying, 'Right, isn't this funny? Are you with me?'
Peter Sellers was a solitary character, always preferring to hide behind a mask, and consequently, you never really got to know the real Sellers.
I love to come in and play with a wig or glasses or clothes. I love using props. I'm from the Peter Sellers school of trying to prepare for the character.
My influences were Peter Sellers and the great British character actors.
It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
I don't think there is a single character in 'The Graduate' that is not a phony, to one degree or another, except Benjamin and Elaine, and only in the scenes when they are alone together.
I've never loved a character as much as I do Niska. The way she's been written is so complex, with huge amounts of light and dark. It's a really satisfying challenge to play someone who is superhuman in their intelligence and physical ability but completely naive when it comes to certain aspects of life.
For me, changing my physical appearance for a character is never a problem. If I have to look a certain way for a role, I just do it.
A good cartoon is always good on two or three levels: surface physical comedy, some intellectual stuff - like Warner Brothers cartoons' pop-culture jokes, gas-rationing jokes during the war - and then the overall character appeal.
There are times when I consciously give the character something physical - a walk, the way he sits, how he talks, or his lack of physicality, which is like a physicality.
I don't want to get pigeon-holed into a certain kind of character. I love action roles and the hero, but I want to keep trying something new.
When you wear a mask and create a character, nothing will pigeonhole you faster.
I personally always have a hard time relating to queer characters in media because I didn't really see myself in them. They were kind of pigeonholed early on as the gay character, and they would naturally end up with the other gay character who would emerge at some point as their love interest.
When I go into 'You're the Worst,' I'm very glammed up, and my hair and makeup is va-va-voom. Now what I'm having fun with in 'Grease' is, honestly, I go to rehearsals with zero makeup. When I get pimples, I get excited about it, like 'Yay! It helps the character!' The frumpier and uglier and grosser, the better with Jan.
Early on in the writing, there is often a sentence that pins down a character for me.
I watch these actors who when you go to buy a pint of milk you see them smiling on the cover of 20 magazines. Then when you see them in a film it's hard to believe the character because you just see them everywhere.
It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.
I questioned everything. I didn't see a character developed in Platoon at all. The character in Blue Velvet was much more fascinating to me.
