Finding the discipline, the motivation, the focus, the passion to sit down in front of a blank piece of paper or a blank computer screen every day and then to make it come alive with characters and with plot is incredibly exciting and at the same time terrifying and frustrating, and sometimes it comes easy and sometimes it comes really hard.
The more gifted and talkative one's characters are, the greater the chances of their resembling the author in tone or tint of mind.
At first I was always cast as the girlfriend. It was a long time before I got to play characters who were people.
I have made 34 pictures, 10 of them for Disney, and none of them for Disney were really bad characters. So I think that recently I have kind of begun to hide behind certain actor's devices in order to make a dividing line between what I used to do and the characters I have been asked to do today.
I'm one of those writers who, when writing, believes she's god-and that she hasn't bestowed free will on any of her characters. In that sense there are no surprises in any of my books.
I saw Tequila Sunrise as a romantic picture with complex, bigger than life characters.
Even though I don't write about things that come from my life because I'm lucky, and I live in a great place with great kids and, you know, a great husband, I think you can find threads of me in the characters, so that's really what being a writer is, probably.
Travel provided many interesting experiences, but perhaps the most useful lesson I learned was that I really had no proficiency for learning the thousands of characters of the written Chinese language.
Being able to improvise is the basis for creating all characters and situations, for everything to do with performing, really. And it's good therapy as well.
I don't want to say I hear voices; well, actually I do hear voices, but I don't think it's supernatural. I think it's just that when characters are given enough texture and backbone, then lo and behold, they stand on their own.
Star Trek characters never go shopping.
I still think of myself as a stage actor. When I do film and television I try to implement what I was taught to do in theatre, to try to stretch into characters that are far from myself.
Of my English friends, I should find language too poor to speak the just praise and the excellence which shines in their characters and lives.
My job is to help the functioning of the story, not to draw attention to myself, but to make my characters function within the story, to work for the benefit of the story, to make the whole thing work.
It's like these ideas, these characters, kind of bubble up inside me, and one day they're not there, and the next day they are there. They're alive, and they're whispering in my head and all that stuff, and I want to write about those things.
People are much more complicated in real life, but my characters are as subtle and nuanced as I can make them. But if you say my characters are too black and white, you've missed the point. Villains are meant to be black-hearted in popular novels. If you say I have a grey-hearted villain, then I've failed.
So as long as I'm a working actor, I can improve. I want to work with people that frighten me and excite me, and characters that I don't believe I'm the best person for the part but I'm still gonna try anyway. Those are my favorite roles.
I never know what's going to happen or what opportunities are going to be given to me. I've found with the opportunities that I've been given have made it possible for me to explore different characters and exciting stories.
It's true that none of my characters are admirable. But maybe I'm primarily a satirist, and a satirist needs to hold up what's not admirable.
'The Walking Dead' never wants you to get too comfortable with characters and cast members. I think about the time you feel fairly secure with your appreciation of a character is about the time the show will gut-punch you.
I don't know why, but I respond well to tortured characters.
I had no intention of pursuing either the characters or the setting further.
It is for the latter that I always wanted to be an actor: to play characters who are always on the move.
Always when I directed the play, I was always trying to cast people not who were necessarily like the characters, but people who I felt had the essential component that the character had, some kind of soul for it.
One of the defining things about my career on camera is I like to play different characters. That gets difficult to do. People don't trust you to do something different. In animation, it's all about trust and how far can you go away from yourself. It's a really marvelous environment that's extremely creative.
I write about real people in disguise. If anything, my characters are toned down-the truth is much more bizarre.
There are too many positive and goody male characters on TV, and they work, so its good for them. I feel each to their own. If it works for them, it's fine. I don't connect to such characters, so I won't do them.
The SF genre, of course, is really an organically evolved, marketplace-determined, idiosyncratic grab bag of themes and signifiers and characters and icons and gadgets, some of which hew to the realistic parameters and paradigms embraced by science, others of which partake more of fantasy and magic.
Because of streaming, serialized television has become less of a dirty word when you're pitching shows. I had to fight for that for so long as someone who's always gravitated towards ongoing story lines with characters that evolved and changed and storylines that continued over longer arcs.
I actually then went on to direct an after-school special where one of the characters was deaf. They hired me without even knowing I had any connection to the community.
My Mom and Dad did it pretty good, so I know it can work. The foremost thing I would say about working with Robin and Sean is that they were devoted to this project and devoted to their characters. You can't ask for any more from talented actors like that.
They are imaginary characters. But perhaps not solely the products of my imagination, since there are some aspects of the characters that relate to my own experience of a wide variety of people.
I don't really distinguish between sympathy and honesty when I'm writing. The two go together - I'm interested in inhabiting my characters, seeing the world through their eyes.
For me, 'Mommy' was about developing very humane characters that would be very credible and endearing and work onscreen.
I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.
Obsession led me to write. It's been that way with every book I've ever written. I become completely consumed by a theme, by characters, by a desire to meet a challenge.
