I like fearless characters, people just not afraid to do anything it takes to make people laugh.
I make extensive outlines before I write a book. I usually know what will happen. I know the characters, and I know what they are about.
A lot of the characters I play are very naive, and I don't think I'm like that. And I'm not stupid!
I plot the first 5 or 6 chapters quite minutely, and also the end. So I know where I am going but not how I'm going to get there, which gives characters the chance to develop organically, as happens in real life as you get to know a person.
The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.
I always believed in my characters. I lived them.
The best games came from great characters.
I have a cheat-sheet for each one of my characters about their personality, the way they look, etc. So there is no possible way that I could have writer's block.
I've played four characters now, my latest one being Sandor the gypsy.
When you write, you hear the characters speaking to you as you take dictation from what they say. And obviously, they had particular personalities when you hear them.
I have a tendency as an actress in general to ground my characters. Even when doing outlandish characters, that's my instinct.
I loved being on stage. I was in elementary school when I started, so I couldn't say that it was about the building of characters.
I'm so different to the roles I play, and perhaps that's why they are appealing to me as an actor. But I would never want to inhabit my characters' shoes in real life.
Casting ethnic characters is a very hard thing to do, but it's important. It's also interesting.
I think I'm drawn to characters with complexity or who are under duress in some way and have some conflict going on.
I sometimes wonder if the inability to find oneself makes one seek oneself in other people, in characters.
I just want to portray a very honest character that displays traits that people can truly relate to and can help them - the audience and myself because I learn from the characters as well - help them see themselves in a perspective that is outside of what they know already, and grow from that experience.
One of my complaints with American TV characters is that they all have a particular schtick, a hook.
Dickens writes such brilliant characters and stories, and his themes and social commentary are still so relevant. I think that's why he's still so loved today.
Certain characters get to me and stay with me for a while.
Also the clothing, people often ask why I talk about what characters are wearing. And that's really important to me, because you have to have a picture of how people moved in their clothes.
My characters are fictional. I get ideas from real people, sometimes, but my characters always exist only in my head.
You get all of your neuroses worked out on stage. I haven't actually played very many nice characters, certainly not on stage. It's not a quality that attracts me.
Mitch and I have known each other for such a long time, and we're both so pleased to be given this opportunity at this point in our lives to play characters that we've never really had a chance to play before. It's a great gift. Plus we're wise enough to appreciate it.
I've always been a fan of movies well before I got involved in the industry. The magic that it brings and being able to, I guess, escape your troubles, escape whatever is going on in life and getting to live in this moment and in the story and live in the lives of these characters.
I like playing complex, interesting characters. Sometimes I don't think there's much of a strong line between right and wrong for a character. Every character is somewhere on a moral spectrum.
I've played all kinds of historical characters, but they are stuck in movies that aren't their movies.
You can't have virtue without sin. What I'm after is having my characters' virtues defined by how they operate in a very sinful environment. That's how you test people.
I just love playing characters that are a long way away from me.
The point of my explanation is I'm very subjective when it comes to describing my characters: they are all a little bit a part of me from the outside in or the inside out - but to put your mind at ease, I built Paul Snider from the outside in.
In my theater work, I've had much more three-dimensional, broader-stroke characters.
'An Education' was a complicated piece of work because it came from a tiny essay, so it took me a while to find the story I wanted to tell and the characters I wanted to tell it about. That really only emerged after four or five drafts.
In real life, people are constantly saying one thing and doing another, but if you write your characters that way, the story becomes too hard to follow.
I always liked movies like 'American Graffiti' and 'Gregory's Girl.' 'Gregory's Girl' is particularly perfect because it really captures that summer holiday bubble of teenage utopia. Even though it's got a happy ending, there's a feeling that these characters may never see each other again.
I don't tend to picture my characters as actors and actresses.
One of the ways my first novel failed was that I was too in love with my characters.
