Player

The Player is the character played by the players. He is seen wearing a blue, tied up shirt and a pair of jeans, but this can be changed (see customizing). He is unofficially known as "Steve".

Health
The player has 10 hearts. On all difficulties the player can heal himself by eating food. Generally, eating cooked food will heal more than eating it raw, but in some cases eating the food raw is impossible. In peaceful difficulty, health regenerates by half a heart per second.

Sprinting
As of beta 1.8 the player will be able to sprint.

HUD
The HUD currently consists of the player's reticule, Hot-bar, health and armour rating (if wearing armour). In the 1.8 update a hunger bar may be implemented. (Possibly where the armour rating currently is)

Modes
In survival mode, the player is able to place and destroy blocks, and use all tools available. In the classic creative mode the player has the ability to place infinite number of blocks, but with no use of crafting or tools.

Customizing
A player can change their character's skin; this can be done on the Preferences page of Minecraft.net by uploading a valid .PNG image file, which will then replace the default skin.

While you can use a female custom skin, there is only one player model, and a male sound set. There are currently no official plans to implement female character models or sounds.

Trivia

 * After the Beta update, the default texture for the player was replaced with a beardless version.
 * Given that the densest substance available in the game is gold, the player is capable of carrying 44,518,667 kg if he fills the entire inventory with gold blocks and wears a full set of gold armour.
 * The player's eye level (According to coordinates while pressing the F3 button) is 1.62 meters, if every block being one meter tall. Using some math, this means that the player height is approximately 1.89m (=6.2 feet).
 * The player can jump about one block high, and about two blocks long.
 * In the .png file he is named char which is short for character.