I have too much respect for the characters I play to make them anything but as real as they can possibly be. I have a great deal of respect for all of them, otherwise I wouldn’t do them. And I don’t want to screw them by not portraying them honestly.

Sedgwick frames acting as an ethical obligation rather than mere performance. By insisting she must render characters “as real as they can possibly be,” she rejects caricature and signals a commitment to psychological truth—treating even flawed or unlikeable roles with seriousness. Her language of “respect” suggests that an actor’s craft involves advocacy: entering a character’s inner logic so the portrayal is honest, coherent, and human. The final line underscores the stakes of representation: to “screw” a character by withholding honesty is to betray both the role and the audience, who rely on authenticity to understand motives, consequences, and complexity.