A lot of the 'Portlandia' characters and a lot of the moments aren't really TV-worthy, but that's what is so refreshing about seeing them.
One of the dangers of science fiction, particularly bad science fiction, is that you have these scenes where the characters turn to a blackboard and start explaining how this faster-than-light drive works, or something like that. We never really have those conversations in real life. That's not part of the way we interact as human beings.
As actors, we have to take characters, and we have to feel for them and ultimately become them, and share that on screen so that audience feels that.
Sometimes you have to delete characters from a scene just to keep from overcrowding the image.
A lot of people go in and have to create their own characters, and they do fine with it.
As for most writers, language is vital for me: a writer's ability to render a fictional world - characters, landscape, emotions - into something original that alters or deepens my understanding of both literature and life.
The physical journey in my films is indicative of the internal journey that my characters take.
What's fun is that the characters in 'Broad City' are rushing and hustling, and our process reflects that.
I think men under pressure - I mean, that's what brings out the worst and the best of us. I like to explore that quite a bit in my characters because I don't see a lot of it on the screen that moved me like the films that I grew up with - that are honest, at least, about honest emotions and honest heroism.
I'm not angry; I write about angry characters. When I'm doing that, I'm happy. Just like when I'm writing about Mickey Sabbath being lustful, I'm not feeling lustful; I'm happy.
Usually my characters, though young, tend to be street-wise.
One of my favorite experiences in my career, certainly one of the most interesting characters I've ever played, was Simon Lee on 'The Event.' That was a show I was quite proud of and a character I really enjoyed playing. It was one of the most three-dimensional characters that was ever written for me and that I'd ever gotten to play.
I'm happy being myself, which I've never been before. I always hid in other people, or tried to find myself through the characters, or live out their lives, but I didn't have those things in mine.
No writer besides Shakespeare has created more memorable characters attached to vices and virtues. In even their least sympathetic characters, one senses a kind of helplessness to passion quivering between the poles of good and evil.
When we were kids, I know when I saw 'Pinocchio' it had a huge impact. I was ten years old, and I went home, and I was drawing the characters.
People look at Marvel movies as epic in scope, but if you look back at the comics, you realise that Marvel heroes were often a reaction to the square-jawed DC characters like Superman, who were flawless and beyond reproach.
I want to have a lengthy career. I want to play interesting characters. I want to tell beautiful stories, complex stories, deep stories.
There aren't enough good roles for strong women. I wish we had more female writers. Most of the female characters you see in films today are the 'poor heartbroken girl.'
Some of my books sort of have a provocative take. Sometimes you find interesting things about characters that show they weren't necessarily the way people usually see them. It can make for lively conversations, but that's great. Spark a little controversy, get people to think about it. That's what it's all about.
'Deity' will be a compelling and exciting thriller with complex and interesting characters. A neo-realistic style to story and images will take the audience deep into Calcutta's many different levels. A fascinating clash between American and Indian culture.
I do love doing films; I love going out and creating different characters for each film, and not having to be stuck with one role for many, many years. It's a creative liberty that I love.
My favorite thing about acting is that I can play all kinds of different people. Frankly, I don't consider myself a very interesting person, so the characters I play are usually much more fun.
Acting allows me to explore new worlds, to discover characters by delving into their lives, and ultimately to become someone else entirely.
There are not that many ventriloquists out there who build their own characters. I love that because they are uniquely mine.
I wanted to create characters who could do fantastic things but who weren't exactly superheros - characters who exist on sort of a spectrum from super-ability to disability.
Writing a book is very personal. It's a very personal relationship. A book will start with something as simple as two men talking about work. That gets the fire going. Sustaining that fire is the hard work. It takes attention and empathy to hone the characters.
There are risks in the sheer brevity of Twitter, and it's actually quite an elegant art reducing what you have to say to 140 characters, and it's something that I quite enjoy attempting to do.
The important thing for me when I look at characters is to consider the kind of constraints placed upon them. Now, me personally, I don't like to have a lot of constraints placed upon me.
I hate SF books that think all you need to make a book is cool technology and mind-bending ideas without a decent plot or characters. And I hate when fantasy books are allowed to ramble off into five hundred page diatribes which don't advance the story one bit.
I can always see something of myself in the characters I play.
One of the things I want to do with 'Desi Rascals' is go a bit deeper into the characters and their family lives and have a bit more heart and a bit more inter-generational story-telling, so it's not all about young people.
With 'Sin Nombre,' there are parts that I wish were longer. And with 'Jane Eyre' especially, there were parts that I had to compress that I thought it would have been really nice to spend more time with - to spend with the characters.
I will play the characters with last names like Sanchez and Gonzalez until the day I die, but I also want to play the 'Michelle Smiths.'
I love the powerful woman who's complicated. There's no push to be one thing or another thing. It's all human. That's what you look for as an actor: characters written and portrayed in the most human way possible.
When I was asked to compose a score for... 'Palo Alto,' I first thought to myself, 'What is the house that these characters would want to live in?' I wanted to paint a picture and color scheme that I could work around. I gently apply different daubs to see what fits to match the color I have in mind with these characters.
I just want to challenge myself and play some different characters.
