I'm usually cast for the more goofy and tomboyish characters.
I've made movies that are real boy movies - but I've had so much fun over the years working with women and getting good performances with women and with strong female characters.
All the other characters are so well-rounded, and it's just frustrating because female characters aren't. It's not that they're badly written, they're just underwritten. They have no internal monologues; they could be absolutely anyone.
Obviously, I love superheroes; I love comic book characters, but I... I guess I've had a lifelong affection for comics, and while I love the characters so much, I also love the medium.
Anytime you look at someone in detail, you're putting the camera on that person. What I typically look for is one or two or three really strong characters who will hold the narrative throughout the work.
Robert De Niro taught me how to listen, and how to be part of the conversation. It's not just about reading your lines and saying what's in the script; you have to understand your character, along with the other characters so that you can always respond.
The fact that I like to make characters doesn't mean that I like to watch my characters being made, my performance.
'The Sound of Things Falling' may be a page turner, but it's also a deep meditation on fate and death. Even in translation, the superb quality of Vasquez's prose is evident, captured in Anne McLean's idiomatic English version. All the novel's characters are well imagined, original and rounded.
A lot of readers want characters to behave in a responsible way, or they want to understand the characters' dilemma and act, in a way, on their behalf.
I know I've erred in the past putting too much of my social justice sentiments in comics, but hopefully not too much, and I tried to only do that with characters that it made sense with it. These days, with the 'social justice' aspects of the two books I write, 'Catwoman' and 'Katana,' the concerns are more about moral justice.
Movie characters rarely get to think out loud or talk very much about their emotions. Instead they have to, very briefly, show their feelings through their action or through dialog.
I sort of fall in love with every character I do; you have to understand how they became what they've become, whether they're the ugly kind or the very beautiful kinds of characters.
Men are limited by the knowledge of their minds, the worth of their characters and the principles upon which they are building their lives.
A lot of my characters are people who are, in essence, lying to themselves. They present one thing, when in reality they're another thing. Maybe they're not as tough or as cool as they want to be.
For people worried about the Great Recession and the uncertainty of what is coming next, the characters of 'Mad Men' are good company.
For me, one of the most beautiful and rewarding aspects of serial reality TV is that characters can move freely along a spectrum of heroism and villainy.
I would do 'Superbad,' and the next offers you would get would all be crazy cop characters or crazy security guards or something.
Maybe this is because I'm a comics historian as much as anything else, but I really have a deep-seated respect for the characters that have been around since before I was born and are probably going to outlive me.
Changes can be made. New decisions can be made. If people say, 'It's not like that in the comics!' Well, comic books reinvent their characters a lot. They do different things with them all the time. They're always changing, always keeping things fresh. So that shouldn't be an issue if the race changes for a character.
What always leads me in terms of my movies are characters.
I like characters like Ignatius Reilly in 'A Confederacy of Dunces' and Ricky Gervais's character in 'The Office.' They think one thing about themselves, but the truth is as far from that as it can be. So I began to think about how to put that kind of character in a book for kids.
When I know what the character I'm supposed to play wants in general terms, and when I know what did the other characters want to do, that's when all these wills collide and the emotions show up.
Cool? Am I cool? I don't know, but I hope my characters are cool, in the sense of iconic. That's my job, at its very essence.
I have played both serious as well as lighter characters, also, and have been satisfied with both types.
I don't play many characters like myself. Oh I don't know what I am!
Wai Lin is the first Bond Girl who is on a par with Bond, someone who can match up with him mentally and physically. From the moment our characters see each other, there is a wariness and a recognition that this person is not who she or he seems to be.
I really think that the 'Jersey Boys' musical - and this is just my opinion - lends itself to being cinematic in some way, because it's a jukebox musical; the characters break into song only for the scene transitions.
There are some characters in 'The Names' who are very much heroes and others who can only be called villains. But generally, as we get to know them, we see most of the characters are, or at least become, quite nuanced.
I wouldn't be surprised if some day, they put the Simpsons in the Smithsonian. It's become part of our culture, those characters.
I did a guest appearance on 'Entourage.' That was horrible, because I'm used to analysing the characters, working with all the details... and they said, 'No no no, walk and talk, walk and talk! It's energy energy energy!' - so it didn't quite suit me.
I try to get roles that challenge me in what I can do and who I think I can portray. For me, it's about creating characters with really fascinating stories, because that's what I like to watch on TV.
I felt pretty good growing up. I didn't feel a lot of prejudice or racism. But I do remember, if there was going to be a movie or a television show with Asian characters, I would go out of my way to avoid them, because they portrayed all Asians as either ridiculously good or ridiculously bad; you know, the whole Charlie Chan-Fu Manchu thing.
As a writer, I'm driven by settings. Others are driven by characters or predicaments, but with me, settings come first.
I write about characters that interest me. And I don't think of my books as being forms of entertainment.
I think of setting as almost a character of its own, influencing the other characters in ways they're not even aware of. So much of the success of a good ghost story rides on creating a creepy atmosphere; details of the landscape itself can help create a sense of dread.
Southern women sometimes get dumbed down when they're turned into characters. I don't like that.
