The thrill of acting is making a character real. Modeling is the opposite of real. It's being fake in front of the camera.
A long time ago, I learned not to go up to the boss and ask what's happening to my character. I haven't done that for 20 years, since I was on 'Days of Our Lives.'
I thought depression was the part of my character that made me worthwhile. I thought so little of myself, felt that I had such scant offerings to give to the world, that the one thing that justified my existence at all was my agony.
Just to assassinate Michael Brown's character is wrong.
When I wrote 'Your Republic Is Calling You,' it was Franz Kafka's writing that I had most in mind, and James Joyce's 'Ulysses.' Entirely out of the blue, Kafka's characters receive an order to go somewhere, and when they try to comply, they never quite manage it. Ki-yong in 'Your Republic Is Calling You' is precisely that sort of character.
Places are extremely important when writing a long story because place shapes a character.
The profoundly 'atomic' character of the universe is visible in everyday experience, in raindrops and grains of sand, in the hosts of the living, and the multitude of stars; even in the ashes of the dead.
My earlier books, 'The Oath,' 'This Present Darkness' were pretty straight adventure. 'The Visitation' is like a deeper book, more thought-provoking. It probes at character more.
I've got to write about my character every day. I've got to find out where he lives, what bus he catches to school, and stuff like that. You've got to know every little thing about him so when you do it, it feels natural.
I've been on 'Criminal Minds' twice! On the first show, a boy brought kids out to the woods and was beating them with a baseball bat, but I got away. Then they brought Tracy, my character, back - as a kidnapped girl. They saved me two times! Tracy lived!
I admire writers such as Elmore Leonard who can nail a character in three or four lines of dialogue, so he doesn't need pages of back story or clumsy exposition.
I worked with Rocky Graziano and Rocky was certainly a character.
Character development is what I value most as a reader of fiction. If an author can manage to create the sort of characters who feel fully real, who I find myself worrying about while I'm walking through the grocery store aisles a week later, that to me is as close to perfection as it gets.
I've never really been a careerist; I've never been able to step back and look at anything in that way. I though this is just what happens. I did take my work very seriously. I loved immersing myself in a character. I loved getting the opportunity to do that. I didn't realize how extraordinary it was, how lucky I was, because I was young.
Artists forget than the first purpose of a comic character is to convey emotion. Everything else, like realism, or other kinds of virtuosity, is an optional extra. If you sacrifice expression for the sake of other concerns, you're putting the cart before the horse.
I've watched my mom take a plain piece of paper and create something beautiful out of it, and I think that kind of manifested for me in taking a character from the page and bringing that to life.
I would never make up a character who didn't exist or an event that didn't transpire. If you're a real writer, you have other tools in your toolbox to build drama.
I write both fiction and nonfiction. I begin my fiction with the main character. The story comes later.
Early on in the writing, there is often a sentence that pins down a character for me.
Every actor has their own process. For me, I really need to stay in the pocket. So, if I'm on set and I'm in character, I'm not thinking like a producer. If I'm on set and I'm not in character, wardrobe and make-up, and I'm just coming on set for the moments that I'm not shooting, then I'm able to be the producer.
I have done theatre, and I enjoy the process of smaller films a lot more. When I do such films, there are certain things which I get to do which are untapped. The scenes give me the liberty to play and mould the character in accordance to the director's mindset.
The great thing about performance capture is you can go off, and then, without changing costume, you can become another character.
We have gotten away from this double aspect of either putting the character back into historical events or of making a historical event of his very life.
Twenty years ago my parents wouldn't know who the X-Men were, and now everybody knows that stuff. It means that deconstruction of the superhero is something you can do. All those movies have led to a point where we can finally have 'Watchmen' with a Superman character who doesn't want to save the world and a Batman who has trouble in bed.
It's my job in Hollywood to find roles where I get to be a character not a bathing suit.
I really love research. It's one of the things I love most about my job. I feel like it's me in the lab cooking up the character.
Action choreographer is like talking. When you talk, you have a rhythm. When you act, you have a rhythm. When you're moving your body, you have a rhythm. So as an actor, as a choreographer, the objective is trying to blend everything in - into - ultimately back into that character.
I find the constraints of drama actually freeing: It brings everything down to character and action.
My journey through life has led me through both light and dark places, and it's because of those experiences that I have learned how to work through my character defects and to help others do the same.
I always try to make each character my own.
Good comedy films, if you listen to the score, the music is not trying to be funny. It's always, in a way, underscoring the tragedy and struggle of the main character.
The chance to play a character with a split personality is an actor's dream.
I create each character as an individual, coming from a certain place, sounding a certain way, having been introduced to things a certain way.
I worked with HBO on 'Recount,' and we had a wonderful experience together. I'm such a fan of HBO and how much flexibility they give in character as well as schedule.
If a character dies, you get to do a big, juicy death scene. But the flip side is you're out of the sequel, which is where the real money is.
I fell in love with this idea of an old school game character, like Donkey Kong, who looks like a very simple guy but is really wrestling with this very profound struggle: 'What's the meaning of life? What if I don't like this job I've been programmed to do?'
