You can be true to the character all you want but you’ve got to go home with yourself.

The remark frames acting—and, more broadly, any performed role—as something that cannot ultimately replace personal integrity. Roberts contrasts loyalty to a “character” (a part, a public persona, or an adopted identity) with the inescapable fact of private selfhood: when the work ends, you still live with your own conscience, habits, and emotional consequences. The line implies a boundary between craft and self-erasure, suggesting that professionalism or immersion is admirable only up to the point where it compromises one’s well-being or moral center. It also reads as a caution against rationalizing harmful behavior in the name of a role: whatever you do, you must answer to yourself afterward.