But I'm attracted to roles where I get to really go in and explore a character.

I remembered their songs but I had never owned a Beatles album.

I grew up in Colorado - went back there, tried to heal myself and grow and learn, then got a call that David Lynch wanted me to fly back to Seattle so he could meet me for Twin Peaks.

Apparently I'm the most naked that anyone's been on TNT. My poor mother. I'm ready to run away.

You always hear actresses talk about how unromantic it is to act a love scene or a sex scene - which it is. You're doing it with all these lights on and cameras flying around and people on the set.

It's awkward: Here you are with most of your clothes off in bed with this person who you've really just met. You're strangers to each other's bodies and you're coming together for the first time in front of all these people.

Every actress has a line she'll draw, where she'll say, This I will do and this I won't. For me, everything has to be important to the story and the director has to be able to tell me why.

And in the middle of one of those scenes, I suddenly felt my heart just open: it was overwhelming, to the point where I got teary-eyed. Never would I have thought anything like that could happen in a love scene.

It's still difficult for me to watch my work.

I highly recommend tantric sex workshops.

I just found out last week - my sister told me - that my father had some Beatles records. So I must have heard them quite a bit, but it never registered, really. Now I listen to them with new ears.

But I'm attracted to roles where I get to really go in and explore a character.

My biggest fear in life is fear.

I just turned 30 so I got really introspective as you do, questioning my life. And when I stopped and sort of looked back at the past decade, I realized I had done more work than I thought I had done.

The more we deny that we have a dark side, the more power it has over us.

I would love to play a nun. I used to want to be one when I was a kid.

If something scares me, then I have to do it.

Animals weren't put on this earth to entertain us.

Every actress has a line she'll draw, where she'll say, 'This I will do and this I won't.' For me, everything has to be important to the story and the director has to be able to tell me why.

I'm fascinated with all kinds of religion, but I'm not committed to any specific one.

I've always had a fascination with vampires. It's not that I'm exactly fascinated with the dark side. It's the human struggle with it. How we deal with those two aspects of who we are. We all have those elements.

If something scares me, then I have to do it. My biggest fear in life is fear.

It's almost as if we each have a vampire inside us. Controlling that beast, that dark side, is what fascinates me.

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.