I play a character every day of my life, and I don't want to play a character as myself. They can judge me as an actress, not as a person. I'm not a spokeswoman for Anna.

I want more children but for the next three years I want to act.

Well ironically my last three roles have all been a mother. One was a Canadian film where the baby was taken away because she is a drug addict, in Irish Jam I play a mother to a four year old. I think in the future I'll be able to handle the role with a lot more depth.

I've never been onstage in my life.

For me personally, everything is on a kiss.

You can see when an actor gets bored: Their eyes go dead. I promised myself I'd never let that happen. If it does, I'll go and live on a desert island for a year.

I've always chosen incredibly different roles and things that are quite offbeat. That way you're not limited.

Now learning a bit more about footballers I think what they need to do well, is someone who really wants to stay in the background and just be a strong support.

The doctors say it dates back to a film where I had these huge prosthetic breasts because my character was breast-feeding. The weight of them, and of the baby, did my back in.

I look at being an actress as being like a mummy: You're bandaged up and preserved as soon as you start making other people money.

And the most important thing - apart from telling a good, believable story, and being a true character - is to be someone the audience will care about, even if you're playing a murderer or rapist.

We will spend more time in America, we're going to get a place in LA as hotels aren't great for the baby.

I play a character every day of my life, and I don't want to play a character as myself. They can judge me as an actress, not as a person. I'm not a spokeswoman for Anna.

It's really important to draw the line on what we do as actors.

Onstage, there's no hiding; you either can or can't act. There's no second take.

Well it's hard to bracket it like that because everyone always thinks you either go to America and you come back, fail or succeed, but it doesn't work like that.

Being a mother gives you an incredible feeling of empowerment, you think if I can go through such pain and that level of sleep and still operate and not be grumpy you can do anything. It can be quite scary, you can't function your brain, forget your vocabulary.

I have the most lovely, healthy bouncing baby, she was all very compact and the right size.

People became more interested in my love life than in me, and that has a certain effect. You start to feel very empty and worth nothing, you start to become a piece in a board game you never wanted to play.

As long as she is talented enough and passionate about doing it herself then I will be happy and support her. I think I will be sensible - my parents said I could only do it if I got my education and so I had something to fall back on.

I've been onstage once for one performance with four days' rehearsal.

David is 13 years my senior and has much more experience.

For Closer, we've had five weeks. You go into every single word because it's very, very concentrated dialogue.

In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes.

I do like to embed a fictional character firmly in an occupation.

But even with a character like Cary who is relatively outlandish, at the end of the movie he's in a place where I wouldn't have expected him to be - taking on the responsibility of a woman who is pregnant and who used to be his best friend's wife.

Always, your work is the same: You have to tell a story, you have to make a character. It doesn't matter if there are thousands of dollars, millions behind it, or if there is nothing.

Each of us is meant to have a character all our own, to be what no other can exactly be, and do what no other can exactly do.

I liked Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, and that is the kind of character that I would like to have played. That would have been more in tune with who I really was.

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

In a lot of ways, the make-up was the character.

The more we study the Indian's character the more we appreciate the marked distinction between the civilized being and the real savage.

So many people have said that to me, that what they really like about Alex is what she brings out in Marissa, and what this situation brings out in her, a hint of happiness and another side to her character.

I've been on the show for six years and I don't even know what her history is. I sort of make things up in my mind, but I think it's hard for an audience to follow and invest in a character when they don't have the details.

It is not true that drink changes a man's character. It may reveal it more clearly.

Because I killed a guy in real life, and because my character kills a guy onstage, they said I could never do anything this great again. I resented that.

Well, I go to the theater today, and its curtain - there is no curtain in this play; the lights go down and go up - and we start. And I live this character for two hours. There are only two of us in the play. And It's a complete experience.

I just kind of understood it, and I threw my love for others and love for life into the character, and was having a blast. I loved playing Dharma. I loved it!

I think if you play a character that is fearless, then it's boring. I think that's what was so incredible about Harrison Ford, is that he always seemed like he was never going to survive it, he's always scared, and yet he always does survive it somehow.

If you look to lead, invest at least 40% of your time managing yourself - your ethics, character, principles, purpose, motivation, and conduct. Invest at least 30% managing those with authority over you, and 15% managing your peers.

Every character I play has to be the hero of his own story, the way we're all heroes of our own lives.

To be a character who feels a deep emotion, one must go into the memory's vault and mix in a sad memory from one's own life.

Character is power; it makes friends, draws patronage and support and opens the way to wealth, honor and happiness.

You have to understand the tone of the movie, because if it's supposed to be funny, it can be funny violent like the Home Alone stuff, but you have to really understand the tone of what you're doing and make the action work for that and for the character.

In Shakespearean tragedy the main source of the convulsion which produces suffering and death is never good: good contributes to this convulsion only from its tragic implication with its opposite in one and the same character.

I feel like I'm the most well-adjusted character on the show, even though I'm sure the other actors would tell you the same thing about their characters.

And what's interesting about him as a comic character is that the custard pie hardly ever ends up on his face.

I worked on my voice for Sweet Dreams, but only to match my speaking voice to Patsy's actual singing voice. That was my way into that character.

I didn't want to be greedy. It's a mark of bad character and I always believed that pigs go the slaughterhouse.