No matter how hard we strive for objectivity, writers are biased toward tension - those moments in which character is forged and revealed.
The Olympics were produced absolutely the same way from 1960 through 1988. It was always the Western World against the Eastern Bloc. You didn't even have to spend one second developing the character of any of the Eastern Bloc athletes. It was just good guys and bad guys.
My definition of a character actor is - they never get the girl.
I've actually always been interested in following a character more long term, but the only place to really do that as an actor is on a TV series.
The way I see it, the third series of 'Downton Abbey' is all about change and how each character adapts to those changes.
Writing for me is quite a plastic form, a kind of mental sculpture, although that sounds weird. It acquires its character and its depth as it goes along.
The great advantage of having a bear as a central character is that he can combine the innocence of a child with the sophistication of an adult.
I recently saw this home video where my brother is playing this character Arsenio Grimley, who is a mix of Arsenio Hall and Ed Grimley - which, clearly, is my parents' doing, because he's, like, 10. He's the host, I'm every guest, and then my dad is Elton John. That was a Saturday night.
It's part of my character not to take myself too seriously. That's one of the reasons I've been able to survive.
You need an actor who can maintain a character over a long period of time. If you have a weak actor, it won't be obvious in two hours, but you'll begin to see his weaknesses over four or five days.
With any character I have played, there's infinite possibilities for how they might behave, depending on who they are talking to or how they react to things.
I always do whatever is best for the character.
Character is made up of a variety of different things. One of those elements is gender.
I just like a good story. I want the story to be good and I want the character to be different than the last one I played. That's not always possible, but that's what I want.
When I'm singing a song, I'm in that song, and I'm thinking about what emotions I should bring to the song. Voicing a character was very similar. It was high energy, and I had to really think about the emotion of what was going on in the scene.
I think I have a job, which is to present a character in a story and entertain you and divert you with my work - that's it.
I think a lot of podcasts have a lot of amazing character work. Seth Morris does this amazing character, Boch Duco, which I think is one of the funniest, most well-realized characters that I've ever seen or heard.
I think each character is different for me, but I am a director's actor. So if I get the right vision and right guidance from my director, I think sky is the limit for me.
Everybody has parents. As a dramatist, whenever you write a character, you must write their parents as well, even if the parents aren't there.
'One Day' is definitely heartbreaking in a few ways, but one of the main ways is that my character and Jim Sturgess's character are just people from two different worlds who love each other in so many ways and can't quite seem to get it together.
When you're acting in a scene, you're focused on doing the scene. You can't break character and go, 'Oh my God, I love what you're doing!'
I'm not running for office. I just want people to come to my stuff and escape and see me as a character, not as anything else.
To me, getting to do music and videos, you work on a character. Being onstage is acting; you get to be larger than life and larger than yourself.
'Star Trek' scared me a lot more than 'White Jazz.' It terrified me, really. Because of the scale, the responsibility, the fact that it was this iconic character. It was the bigger challenge, so I had to take it.
When X-rays traverse matter of any kind, this matter becomes a source of a radiation similar in character to that of the primary radiation falling upon it.
I remember my dad working with me on breaking down my script and writing out a back story for my character and all that stuff.
It annoys me when people can't differentiate between the character and the actor, which is a little bit silly.
It's really a misconception to identify the writer with the main character, given that the author creates all the characters in the book. In certain ways, I'm every character.
Sometimes there is more exploration in the character for a villain.
I've met many, many writers who say they would never write about their family, never write about people they did not totally make up. But that is not the composition of my character.
If I get the walk of a character, that helps me find them. So I'm constantly looking at airports and train stations, registering walks.
In every character you play, as much as you hate to admit it as an actor, but there's an element of you that you bring to it. Either the character helps you discover that element of you or the other way around, where that element of you helps you discover the character.
At the beginning of 'The Hills,' I couldn't watch myself because I'm very critical and would pick myself to pieces. But with movies I feel like it's different because you're playing a character. So it's like watching yourself but not watching yourself.
I don't start a song with an idea of what ingredients are going to go into a song. It's not like a recipe. I will normally either talk from personal experience or I'll make a character and then try to allow that character to behave the way he or she naturally would.
The dream would be to work with my two favorite actors, Daniel Day Lewis and Cate Blanchett. Or playing Joaquin Phoenix's brother in a film. Basically anything where I get to act opposite actors like these; ones who bring a certain caliber to their work and literally morph into the character they are playing.
Watching somebody sing reveals a lot about character.
