I write R-rated action dramas, and every year that goes by, that gets to be a smaller and smaller world you have to work in. You have to think of how to get the studio excited and sell them something.
If consulted by friends about marital dramas, I always encourage the singles to marry, the married to stick together, the neglectful and wayward to renew their loving commitment and the wronged to forgive.
Generally, I am losing faith in telly, as we do have good dramas but not as many as there should be.
I've seen 'Lord of the Rings' and 'The Hobbit' about 25 times each, so I like all kinds of movies, but I'm drawn, as an actor, to dramas about humans living lives I can relate to.
I love romantic comedies, or romantic dramas - basically anything with love in it.
Foucault's genius is to go down to the little dramas, dress them in facts hardly anyone else has noticed, and turn these stage settings into clues to a hitherto un-thought series of confrontations out of which, he contends, the orderly structure of society is composed.
I like expensive-looking, nuanced, hour-long dramas that don't smell like regular TV. That and cheap, funny shows that feel like one guy made them by himself. So ... artisanal television?
A lot of romantic comedies are just light romantic dramas, or the comedy comes off second-best.
People ask me all the time, 'Are you fed up with reality TV?' At the end of the day, it can affect my career in the sense that the more reality shows there are, the less scripted dramas out there, but I can't ever really knock them. I started on 'Popstars,' which was a reality talent show. I have respect for them.
I'm not a big believer in the idea of genre - I'm a fan of any writer who can pull me into compelling characters and stories - but I can't imagine I'll start writing domestic dramas any time soon.
I would say 80% of the scripts I get are dramas and not comedies or romantic comedies, which is funny because that's what I do every week.
My real name is Madeleine Wickham, under which I write dramas with an edge of humour. As Sophie Kinsella it's fast, all-out comedies, such as the 'Shopaholic' series.
Dramas need to have a certain aesthetic that comedy just doesn't really seem to need to have.
Fairytales work on two levels. On a conscious level, they are stories of true love and triumph and overcoming difficult odds and so are pleasurable to read. But they work on a deeper and symbolic level in that they play out our universal psychological dramas and hidden desires and fears.
I have always liked family-type dramas; I just think the dynamics in families make for some really interesting characters.
I have been through and seen so many dramas and traumas and been in so many situations that I can probably interpret a few different characters.
I've calmed down. Looking back, I was engaged more in dramas than I was in relationships. I've spent a lot of my life being in it for the plot, and I don't do that anymore. I'm satisfied. I'm not competing with myself. I accomplished things I wanted to do, so everything I do now is because I want to, not because I'm trying to prove something.
I believe the life of every person is worthy of scrutiny, containing its own secrets and dramas.
When I was a young kid, the best stuff on television was always the BBC period dramas - it was what we sat down as a family to watch and what people talked about and looked forward to.
I think that the difference between 'The Sopranos' and the shows that came before it was that it was really personal. There had been a lot of dramas, a lot of really good ones, a lot of really bad ones, but they were always franchise shows about cops, or doctors, or lawyers. They weren't about the writer himself.
