If you’re going to play a character, you’ve got to own it. You can’t fake it.

There are certain characteristics that define a good chimp mother. She is patient, she is protective but she is not over-protective – that is really important. She is tolerant, but she can impose discipline. She is affectionate. She plays. And the most important of all: she is supportive.

Your character is defined by how you react to tough situations.

I think the ultimate challenge is to have some kind of style and grace, even though you haven’t got money, or standing in society, or formal education. I had a very middle, lower-middle class sort of upbringing, but I identify with people who’ve had, at some point in their lives to struggle to survive. It adds another color to your character.

Humanity will… be confronted with dangers of unprecedented character unless, in due time, measures can be taken to forestall a disastrous competition in such formidable armaments and to establish an international control of the manufacture and use of the powerful materials.

For years there, I sort of lived the character.

In cricket, you’ve got to have a bit of flair and a bit of character.

I was taught to respect everyone for the simple reason that we’re all God’s children. I was taught, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr…. to judge a man not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character. And I was taught that character…is simply doing what’s right when nobody’s looking.

Meekness is one of the brightest graces which can adorn the Christian character.

You know what I like? I like classic stuff. I like ‘The Andy Griffith Show’ – the variety of characters was so amazing to me.

I’ll drive down the street, and I’ll practice improv. I will sit there at a red light and see two guys talking to each other, and I will just start playing both characters. I can’t hear them, but I can see their mouths moving, so I’ll just put words in their mouths.

California, that advance post of our civilization, with its huge aircraft factories, TV and film studios, automobile way of life… its flavourless cosmopolitanism, its charlatan philosophies and religions, its lack of anything old and well-tried rooted in tradition and character.

I really enjoy working in genre series, because you really have to create the characters.

I now can be sure that, once I start writing a book, I’ll be able to finish it. I’ve also become more assured about my ‘voice’ as a writer and being able to keep the characters true to themselves.

[R]efusing or not refusing to execute a law to stamp it with its final character . . . makes the Judiciary department paramount in fact to the Legislature, which was never intended and can never be proper.

I know there are only so many characters I’ll be able to play.

I try to play characters who are different from myself, so I feel like this character is someone who is really different. I actually think that if I did what he did in this movie, I would get a restraining order put against me.

I think that you can sort of have your own personal journey and you know, you can just kind of apply that to whatever characters you’re playing.

I’m attracted to films that have strong female characters because there are strong female characters in my life.

I just have my own taste, and I just try and stick with that. I’m just trying to play as many characters as I can for as long as I have an opportunity to.

All my characters are me. I’m not a good enough actor to become a character. I hear about actors who become the role and I think ‘I wonder what that feels like.’ Because for me, they’re all me.

You know how sometimes department stores have these things where, if you win, you get 10 minutes to go in and take anything you want from the store? That’s basically what I’m doing. I’m running in and just trying to grab as many characters as possible before they pull the plug on me.

That’s why I like old monster movie actors, because they transform into different characters or creatures.

I think younger readers connect so readily to animal characters because they share a certain vulnerability, particularly when it comes to adult humans, who can be a rather unpredictable lot.

Even when the characters are supposed to be accustomed to the wonder, I try to weave an air of awe and impressiveness corresponding to what the reader should feel. A casual style ruins any serious fantasy.

I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character!

It’s funny, people talk about the characters they play and who do you sort of see yourself as or which ones maybe were closest to you and in some ways.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

As a general principle you should not force young men to do their duty, but let them do it voluntarily and thereby develop their characters.

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.’

Loyalty is a feature in a boy’s character that inspires boundless hope.

What we do may be small, but it has a certain character of permanence and to have produced anything of the slightest permanent interest, whether it be a copy of verses or a geometrical theorem, is to have done something utterly beyond the powers of the vast majority of men.

If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.

I think that my fascination with clothes generally was motivated by trying to create the characters for the stage.

I never really got the book together for the thing, so I had all the songs and the characters. But by the time we’d gotten it on the road and I’d been doing it for 18 months, oh God, I couldn’t wait to move on to something else.

I’ve been hanging around a lot of people that’s wealthy, that is rich, that is famous. One thing I learned is that no matter how much money you have, no matter how big you are, how famous you are, they will still end up stealing your charger and your lighter.

Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.

I love Los Angeles, and it’s been very good to me, but if everyone is running around telling the stories, who’s living them? You don’t play characters that are celebrities – you play guys who know what to do when their septic tank’s blocked.

The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character detests and despises it.

I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.

Strength is not empty rhetoric. It is not bluster. It is not theatrics. Real strength, strength of purpose, comes from integrity and character. And, in my experience, the strongest person usually isn’t the loudest one in the room.

I make a great difference between people. I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me. Is that very vain of me? I think it is rather vain

I think that the best characters are the ones who both manage to be attractive and repulsive at the same time.

Generally my instinct is to not do biographical movies. I want to build characters and not be locked into playing a part in history.

The best characters are the ones that somehow manage to be both attractive and repulsive at the same time. If you do that, you’re at the center of the universe – if you can find characters who are more ambiguous and can raise more questions than answers.

When you’re playing supernatural characters, there’s an infinite number of possibilities with a character. And I also think they’re wonderful and entertaining for the whole family. You don’t have a high body count.

I do like characters that have flaws, some sort of pathos to them that they are trying to sort out.

I’ve been inspired by dreams – I’ve even stolen scenes or images or characters from them.

If you get stuck, you can ask yourself what your characters want—and that is like a flashlight. It shines a light on the road ahead and lets you move forward. It’s the only question that opens the door to ‘What do you do next?

The Big Bang Theory: When geeky scientists can be main characters in a hit prime time series, you know there’s hope for the world.

I don’t want followers, but friends, admirers who fall not for a flattering smile, but for what one does and for one’s character

Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hand

I went through a period when I felt my film characters were having more fun than I was. It might partly explain why I ended up tattooed or doing certain extreme things in my life.

I was of the generation where most of the Disney princesses and female characters were not girls that I admired. They just weren’t characters I looked up to and identified with.

Yes,” said Lady St Julians. “I think those men who breakfast out or who give breakfasts are generally dangerous characters; at least, I would not trust them.