Sharlto Copley Quotations

Because I'm a filmmaker at heart, I know a villain can't be too humanized and the audience can't empathize with him too much.

Villains are not fun for me to play, as such. But caricature-ish, intense behaviors that are based on real human traits are interesting. That makes an interesting story.

That's what a powerful story does. It creates a more intense experience of life for you to watch. That's what a good film does for me, anyway. That process, I enjoy. It just makes for entertaining characters and entertaining films.

The accent is always critical for me because it informs a lot of the character.

My combined experiences, doing different films, has made me very concerned about and interested in how you protect your creative self when the work, by default, is going to be judged by people.

You aren't always going to make stuff that everybody does. The sooner that you just realize that and accept that, the better. At best, hopefully, you will like it, every time, and that might not even happen. It's the nature of your work. It's just what comes with it. So, it makes it easier to deal with anybody criticizing you or anything thinking you're wonderful when you realize that you just need to focus in this one area, which is your creative fulfillment and enjoyment.

Hopefully, you'll be able to find enough of an audience, each time, that you can keep working, rather than getting caught up in the Hollywood system, which can so quickly become about how much money something makes and how many people went to watch it. It's very alluring. It's such a powerful machine that's playing on you, the whole time.

I love comedy. I suppose comedy is my first love, in a way. I did a lot of acting, funnily enough, unprofessionally, as a kid. From when I was 10 years old until I was about 19, I was always doing little sketches with my friends, and doing different accents and voices. Probably about 3/4 of those were comedic, in some way, and the other 1/4 was more serious stuff or more action or more dramatic little pieces that I would make. But, I tend to lean towards comedy.

At the end of the day, all you really have is your own sense of your artistic ability and I've always stuck with that my whole life. I guess there is always a bit of relief that I have and real joy of being able to engage other people who are talented, equally or better than you, and you can work with them.

I feel very blessed to have had the opportunities that have already come. I want to pursue it as long as I can find characters that resonate with me and projects that resonate with me. I feel very comfortable in that world.