I didn’t set out to be a villain in film. I’m a character actor, and if my first movie was a comedy, I could have played a geek just as well.
I like Edward G. Robinson – he started as a character actor and became a lead, which is probably why I like him.
But I’m not, I’m legitimate, I’m a legitimate character actor of the theatre and film.
My approach to the work is the same, whether I had the lead or a supporting role. I consider myself a character actor in the true sense of the word. Unless I’m doing my autobiography, I’m playing a character.
I’m a character actor, and I made a choice when I was young, after ‘Mystic Pizza’, not to go for the mainstream stuff, and to do a more eclectic kind of route.
I’ll be working the rest of my life because I’m a character actor and don’t have to worry about box office.
I found my niche as a character actor, and I’ve never felt like a movie star or teen idol and never wanted to.
When you are a character actor they trust you will go in and give them a full character and leave.
And I have been able to establish this sort of decent reputation as being a decent character actor.
My job as a character actor is to make me fit the character, to serve the character. To present this human being who turns up in a piece of film or entertainment that’s going, you know, exist as if it might exist after the film is finished and it existed before the film has started.
Poindexter was a part that’s in the children’s theater side of me, that character actor side of me. It’s probably my favorite role because nobody will let me play that anymore.
I never saw myself as a character actor or a lead actor; I’ve only seen myself as just an actor.
Well, I think probably when I first got in the business, I wasn’t thinking of being strictly a character actor. But I knew I wanted to be a working actor, and as the years have gone on, I just naturally evolved into that. Because, y’know, I’m not a leading guy. Never was.
Being a character actor, I can go on until I’m 70 or 80; I’m not bound to the way I look.
How you look is part of what acting is, but the way I look at it, every actor is a character actor. Someone once told me at a casting, ‘You’re a character actor in a leading man’s body,’ and I can live with that.
I don’t get offered leading parts. I suppose I’ve become a kind of character actor or sideman. I think it had to do with probably in the ’90s, I refused so many leading roles that they gave up on me, or I just became unpopular, or I became old. All those reasons.
I lost 90 pounds and my blood pressure went down to a normal level and the salt in my urine disappeared. And that was when I had to make the transition from fat character actor to thin character actor.
I lost 90 pounds and my blood pressure went down to a normal level and the salt in my urine disappeared. And that was when I had to make the transition from fat character actor to thin character actor.
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