If you can remove a female character from your plot and replace her with a sexy lamp and your story still works, you're a hack.
What do I bring to a film? I think, maybe, I know for a fact that I focus on connection of character; I focus on warmth and a heart, but I don't know if it's because I'm African American or because I'm crazy -who knows.
I started off at the Second City in Chicago... It's an improvisational theater that ostensibly does social and political satire, but when I was there, we generally didn't. We did character work, and we did just the silliest things we could think of. We weren't all that concerned with, you know, changing the world through mime.
I think a good story's a good story and a good character's a good character.
If you feel that there's the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of identifying the author with the narrator, and you can't, obviously, be all of the narrators in all of your books, or else you'd be a very strange person indeed.
I wasn't perfect and didn't have it together. I felt alone. So through acting, I decided to be a shape shifter and with every role become the character instead of being myself. It meant about 10 years of no one knowing I was the same person in every movie.
When my main character in 'Heat' climbs the tower, the highest diving platform, hoping to resume competitive diving after an injury, I am there with her, sensing the cold grit under her instep. The details are what matter - they are the experience.
The bad guy in any good storytelling is always, in some weird way, a mirror for your hero's journey and for the challenges that they are facing and is some weird physical externalization of that fear that the character is holding onto and has to overcome.
Tick is a cartoon character, I don't know if you're familiar with him. This is the third step in his evolution. Comic book to cartoon to, now, live-action.
I just want to do shows because you get to see, over all the seasons, the person grow, and you get to grow with the character. That transformation, for me, is what I love about my job. I get to learn about myself and challenge myself and grow with the character. For me, it's a whole process of learning and growing.
You're always trying to do something that, on one hand, honors all those stories, that is still in some way the same character that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were doing back in the sixties. But, at the same time, you want to be able to tell new stories and not just rehash what's come before.
I sort of fall in love with every character I do; you have to understand how they became what they've become, whether they're the ugly kind or the very beautiful kinds of characters.
I did 'Shameless' on Showtime, and I felt like I really tried to go super-method with that, and it would just make my days really hard to get in and out of character.
I refuse to work evenings or weekends. If a script sees my character meeting for dinner, I put a line through the words and make them meet for lunch.
When you get a character that you're just starting to work on, it's the most exciting and most terrifying feeling because you have endless hours of diving in, researching, reading, and decision-making.
I've been a character actress right from the beginning. I was no more like 'Cinderella' in my real life than I was like the neurotic poet in 'Cop.'
Character is primary. What happens as far as plot and events is not as intriguing to me as what's happening inside this particular person.
I think I may have become an actor to hide from myself. You can escape into a character.
I think of myself more as a character actor than that ingenue leading lady, who started out something like Michelle Pfeiffer, or Jessica Lange. I'm a bit quirkier than that.
You have to have sympathy for and an empathy with a character in order to play them.
I would love to write a script where the main character is a woman. I know I can direct a film where the main character is a woman. I cannot write that film.
Changes can be made. New decisions can be made. If people say, 'It's not like that in the comics!' Well, comic books reinvent their characters a lot. They do different things with them all the time. They're always changing, always keeping things fresh. So that shouldn't be an issue if the race changes for a character.
When I did 'The Social Network', David Fincher told me that I managed to make a thankless character pretty awesome. I thought that was really cool because I think he's really cool.
Audiences make their minds up about people they see on screen, just like they do in real life. That's what fascinates me in film. You see a character and have to think: is this person different to what I assumed he was when I first saw him?
Sometimes I'll get a premise, you know, for a book. In fact, I get those quite often. And I don't commit to it until I really know the voice of that character. It's almost as if the character is speaking to me.
I still get terrified if I have to talk in front of a group of people. By having a character to play, it makes it safer.
There is a shy side to me that evaporates when I play on stage, and I like that. I think it's another facet of my character, and I need to do that.
I look for a role that hopefully I feel empathy with and that I can understand and love, but also that has that challenge for me to play - a different kind of role, a different type of character, a different time period.
There aren't as many roles, and I think there's a lack of openness in casting an Asian character in a leading role or unless they're a stereotype. It's been hard. I've been able to play some non-stereotypical roles, which is great, but I have a lot of Asian actor friends who are struggling.
I like characters like Ignatius Reilly in 'A Confederacy of Dunces' and Ricky Gervais's character in 'The Office.' They think one thing about themselves, but the truth is as far from that as it can be. So I began to think about how to put that kind of character in a book for kids.
Why can't I ever play a nice, normal, salt-of-the-earth type? Is there something I should know? It's fun to play villains and character roles, of course - but I'm sure it's also fun to be a really big star and play the lead in everything, where all you have to do is show up and not blink.
It is the highest form of self-respect to admit our errors and mistakes and make amends for them. To make a mistake is only an error in judgment, but to adhere to it when it is discovered shows infirmity of character.
When I know what the character I'm supposed to play wants in general terms, and when I know what did the other characters want to do, that's when all these wills collide and the emotions show up.
This Romeo character is something I decided to create, like my alter ego. So the name Romeo was invented from the original Romeo and Juliet. I wanted to show people I'm like a modern Romeo.
While I was writing 'The Spare Room,' I thought, 'I'm going to look really bad in this book - there's no redeeming this kind of awful, ugly emotion', and I thought, 'I'm not going to change it. I'll call the character 'Helen' and admit to those feelings.' I think this is a reason why people write.
A film has a beginning, middle, and an end. There is a certain amount of time that you have to embody these people. You know the entire story arch. But on TV, you have to let your guard down. You don't know how long the show is going to last. There is this excitement that comes with developing a character long-term.
