Photoplayer Hater

No actors wants to play characters just like another actor did. One of many advantages actors have is that of being a unique person. Actors aren't just machines that are fed text and actions and out comes a character. Actors have feelings and emotions and experiences that will color performances and make them one-of-a-kind.

Sometimes the character just doesn't seem to be coming alive. It could be that you have the portrayal that another actor did in your mind the whole time, or that no ideas seem to be striking you as good to pursue. These are the times that you need to take a leap of faith or more drastic action.

Quiet Mind, Emotions Guide You

The most personal way you can play a character is by letting the material effect you on a subconscious level and allowing your body to react without thinking. This is how people mostly act in everyday life. They act on emotion. They are hit with the stimulus and they respond before the brain ever enters the equation. If you're able to relax yourself thoroughly this technique may prove fruitful for you.

Copy A Real Person In Your Life

Sometimes the feelings and emotions of the text just don't provoke anything in you. You still want to play the character in a unique way, but it doesn't seem to want to come out of you organically. During your life you've come across people you would describe as "characters". These are the type of people that if seen on stage you would be mesmerized by. If your portrayal is falling flat because your character just doesn't seem to have that spark of life, you may want to mimice a compelling personality from your real life.

Copy A Non-Fiction Person From Media

We have limited number of people we run across in our daily life. Some of us watch more TV than we spend with real people. The majority of programming on TV is not fictional but nonfiction, reality, or news. Although most of the personalities that host the show's are well-known and not something you could use for a character without falling into parody, on any given day there are myriad guests on these shows that rarely appear on television otherwise. They may do a single interview on a one news show and never be seen on television ever again. Some of these people might fall into the category of "character" also. So record their media appearance, watch it over and over, and use them as inspiration for your character.

Mannerisms You Create, Record And Watch

Sometimes we come up with unique mannerisms and quirks that we would love to use for a character. It's easy to incorporate a single action but more difficult to compose a suite of things they do and have them come together as a coherent whole. It's easy to copy another person but hard to consciously create one from scratch. To do this you can record yourself in various circumstances manifesting these parts of their personality and use it as a reference in your attempt to ingrain these things in your subconscious. Edit together the bits you want to mimic and watch them over and over and hopefully they will soon become a real person in your head.

Many acting teachers wouldn't approve some of these tactics. They would rather you do everything by the book and would discourage this type of mimicry. But as you'll learn in the world of filmmaking there is no right or wrong way. If it works in the production than go with it. You may not want to use only one of these tactics but a combination, and you may have some of your own techniques to add to it. The important thing is to not limit yourself to proscribed techniques and employ any tactic that will get the job done.