It isn't that easy to drop character, especially when you shoot for 12 to 16 hours a day for six months.
I've learned a lot with every character, everything from being a cop, to a lawyer to a tattoo artist. And underneath that stuff, I've been really able to find myself through the characters. It's served as a cheap form of emotional therapy.
Ron Swanson is more than the MVP of the 'Parks and Recreation' squad, more than just the funniest character on TV - he's the perfect depiction of aggrieved American manhood at the twilight of the empire.
Have we been going up and down in business, and are those round about us as yet unaware of our Christian character? Have we never spoken to them the Word of Life? Lord, arouse us to a deep concern for all with whom we come in contact from day to day.
There's a lot of romanticisation of the intuitive actor and method acting and all kinds of notions about getting inside a character and coming out from there.
As human beings, of course, we're all compromised and complex and contradictory and if a screenplay can express those contradictions within a character and if there's room for me to express them, that's a part I'd love to play, so much more than a character who is heroic and one-dimensional.
No actor can play a villain if they don't sympathise with him or her - otherwise the character just becomes a two-dimensional caricature.
While faith need not be monolithic - it can motivate both voting behavior and character development - focus matters. A Christianity constantly looking for political answers to moral and spiritual problems gives believers an excuse to blame other people when they should be looking in the mirror.
If you're really being honest with yourself when you're acting, part of it is touching the real you. You can only separate yourself so much from the character. Those vulnerable moments do touch me.
My work is distinct and definitive and specific, and hopefully it is so that every single character is different, and they are - but there's probably an underlying element that's me.
Green Arrow was a very complicated character to take on because he has archaic weaponry. Catwoman, I think is more of a simple archetype to grasp, so it will be about nuance. But I think you need three or four issues before you say, 'Ah ha! Now I really know how to write this character!' You're carrying them around with you.
What good is a character who's always winking at the audience to let them in on the secret?
You want the audience to be in the character's shoes. The more deeply into the character's shoes the audience is, the more they're going to care about what's going on.
If you have an extreme character, you need normal characters to contrast them. Sherlock Holmes certainly needed a Dr. Watson. And Pippi Longstocking, who supposedly inspired Lisbeth Salander, needed Tommy and Annika, the normal middle-class neighbors.
My mom was such a strong character. I don't want to say she was like a man, but she was tough.
Theatre should be a taxing experience: the greatest achievement of a writer is to produce a character who creates anxiety.
'EastEnders' has been wonderful to me and it's no secret that it changed my life all of those years ago. I'll be so sad to leave Peggy behind; she's such a wonderful character to play. I have had the pleasure of working with a marvelous cast and crew and have made many lasting good friends.
When I first heard 'A Christmas Story, the musical,' I thought, Oh, that could be really good. It just felt like it fit. Some films lend themselves well to other formats, some don't, but there are so many fantasy sequences in the film, and Ralphie's such a dreamer as a character, I thought they could really lend themselves to being set pieces.
I begin a book with imagery, more than I do with an idea or a character. Some kind of poetic image.
In Torch Song, I did that character almost non-stop from 1978 until I made the movie in 1987. Then I had some failure, which also colors how you react to doing other things.
I love 'Pac-man', 'Mortal Kombat', and 'Street Fighter'. 'Ryu' is my favourite-ever character - I'd love to leapfrog the Hadouken. I never really evolved too far beyond that, but I have played '2K17'.
When you're playing a supporting character, you don't really have a lot of control of the quality of the film.
I let action rise out of character, really.
I'm not like a Sears Catalog of ideas. I don't have that many ideas. I've more or less written them over the years. Usually, I come up with a situation or a character, and it rattles around in my head until the story or the plot emerges.
Acting is make-believe. I never believe I'm the character; I want you to believe.
A good script is like a work of art in itself. I've read hundreds of scripts, and good ones are very rare. If the writer has something to say, and a voice, and a plot that matches character, and an emotional trajectory that works, then I'd be an idiot to fool around with it. It's just that few scripts ever are like that.
My very first role was the character of Barbara Winslow in the movie 'Marmaduke.' Up until that point, I had only done commercials. I had never done a guest star role or a series, and yet they cast me!
What we want, above all things on earth in our public men, is independence. It is one great defect in the character of the public men of America that there is that real want of independence; and, in this respect, a most marked contrast exists between public men in this country and in Great Britain.
I have a comic character - my sister said that I'm the victim of every joke I tell.
I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.
I don't mind being the center of attention as a character but in real life it's not for me.
What's the point of doing a great character in a bad film? Instead, I want audiences to thoroughly enjoy a film and remember my part when they walk out of a cinema hall.
I think there's a character one has if you're a chief executive officer. Movies would suggest you're a bad person - if you're wealthy, if you've done well, oh, you must be bad. And frankly, winning the lottery doesn't change who you are; you're the same person inside. And I'm the same person I was as an 18-year-old who fell in love with Ann.
I joined a radical group at the age of 16 because I'm a passionate man; the good news is that I turned myself around since then. But my character is still quite free and passionate.
A defining reality for me is what Scripture teaches in Hebrews 12, that God is our father, and that a sign that he loves us is that he disciplines us, he takes us through hardship to build character in us that could not be shaped apart from difficulty.
Robert De Niro taught me how to listen, and how to be part of the conversation. It's not just about reading your lines and saying what's in the script; you have to understand your character, along with the other characters so that you can always respond.
