You'll read a script, and it'll grab me, or it won't.
When you're starting out, you know, you have to do something on a very limited budget. You're not going to be able to have great actors, and you're most likely not going to have a great script.
I truly think a long career is to keep the audience guessing and not being able to be boxed, and for me, I'm not hell-bent on playing the lead in things as long its an interesting character with phenomenally talented people, and it's a script that I feel is genuinely innovative, creative, and potentially interesting for an audience.
I got a script sent to me at this office and I got a call from a woman - Universal's doing a snowboarding movie. I'm not in it yet, but I'm supposed to meet with the director in New York soon. I'm waiting to hear back from them.
I kind of went into soap opera with 'General Hospital' in the '80s. It's like theater because every day it's a new script, which really doesn't have a beginning, middle or end like a play or a movie script. So you have to be on your toes and bring it every day. And you have to be spontaneous, which is really how I like to work.
When I was in New York, a lot of my friends were studying filmmaking and would bring their scripts to me, as I was a good script doctor. I would read their scripts and make corrections to them for $20 per script and was fascinated by films.
You can tell if you're going to be into a script within the first five or ten pages - if I'm not completely engaged by page 20, I just have to give up on it.
I got it into my head that I was going to be starring in movies that I wrote, so that's what I did. I stopped acting in all things, and I wrote my first script, which was optioned a week after I finished it.
It's always more fun when something happens outside of a script.
If I want to kiss, I shall kiss. If I am told that a lovemaking scene is integral to the script, I will consider it.
But once we got on the air, everybody except Morey Amsterdam pretty much stuck to the script.
I like to make all kinds of movies. I'd do 'Ocean's Thirteen' with the right script.
I can't remember what my first script was.
The only thing approaching art in a movie is the script.
I had written a script called 'Freed,' which I had wanted to direct.
I've been pretty lucky - or slothful - in that I've never been a 'career builder.' I take the jobs that come along that feel right, and that's left me fairly open to all genres, really. But with 'Caprica,' the complex, dark and very smart script was the draw.
As a rule it usually takes three or four readings for me to be interested in a script, and if I'm interested I'll read it three or four times before I make a strong decision.
My friends, we all improvise together usually. So we write what I think is a good script but always leave a lot of room to find stuff on the day; and we always do find something. That's the advantage to having actors who are, in their own right, writers.
Ensure that your script is watertight. If it's not on the page, it will never magically appear on the screen.
I've been working on the screen right from childhood and am completely in love with my work. And this experience has taught me that ultimately, it's a good script, good work that matters, whether in Bollywood or in the South.
To get a script like 'Death Proof' and to get cast in it just affirmed that I want to do character work; that's where my heart is. Maybe I will get to it again, maybe I won't, but it's what I like to do is play something a little outside of myself. This solidified the desire certainly for me.
There's a certain arrogance to an actor who will look at a script and feel like, because the words are simple, maybe they can paraphrase it and make it better.
But, yeah, I'm really happy when I'm writing. When I'm being creative and when I have something that I can put down. You know, if you go out and you overhear a conversation or you have a thought, you have a receptacle to go home and say, 'Oh, this would be great in this script.' Your antenna's out in a different way, and I love that time.
I have always tried to work according to what affects me, to a script that I like because it touches me in some way, without deliberately pursuing a commercial career or a particular image.
I am a fan of all genres. My big thing is to serve the purpose of the script and what the director wants. If it's a comedy, I want to be funny; if it's action, I want to bring the action. If it's drama, I want to be the catalyst for that drama. That's the fun part; it never gets boring being an actor.
'Liberace's a great film. It's a great piece of material. I have a great script and it's a great score.
When I get cast, I always flip to the end of the script to see if my character gets beaten up or killed.
The challenging thing is that we go home after doing the run-through and the writers stay there working, so sometimes I get script changes delivered to me at midnight. It's constantly shifting.
At the same time, reading an action script... It makes me wonder. Was The Matrix a good script? I don't know.
If I put the script down more than once, there's a good chance that I probably don't want to play the part.
Everyone can do a character the way they want to do it, unless the director tells them not to, which isn't very common. I like to do my characters, if it's not specific in the script, as myself.
I've been spoiled by this project. I was given the script and went in to read, realizing that this was a powerful story and one that wasn't told very often.
Often when you get a really good script, and you receive the new pages, you see that the entire thing has been dumbed down. Films in the '30s and '40s, that were huge blockbusters, were very sophisticated in their language, and the ideas they brought. There were no questions about whether the audience would get it or not.
And I'm auditioning right now for a movie, and then I have a script that I'm reading right now for a horror film, and I'm meeting for a couple of television shows that I just had yesterday, and pretty much was offered one of them.
I discovered that, in order to write a magnificent piece, you should shoot the images because once you are filming, you are writing the script in your mind.
So you have to keep waiting and then they give you the script and it's terrible. Then you have to go to the rewrite and they're very upset because you didn't like it. I went through that for seven years.
