I suppose I'm always looking for a sort of acuity of perception either in my characters or about my characters.
I've gotten pretty good at leaving characters on the set. I go home and try to relax and regroup and be ready for the next day.
I believe strongly that characters are five-dimensional, and they're complicated, and life is complicated, and people are complicated.
What I think is wonderful is that women are not just avengers or victims in films. They are people. They are characters. It's so refreshing. They're playing different kinds of characters, and they aren't being typecast.
You get very possessive about characters, you feel you can see it in your mind and you want to play it.
There are always certain things that you tap into, your own personal experiences, and I try to base my characters on someone I know or someone I've seen.
I don't want to adhere to any particular image. I have tried to bring in variety to my characters. But then, only a few actors have managed to earn this tag of a romantic hero. Many have aspired to get such a label. So I am not complaining.
I love all the 'Twilight' characters. I can watch Kristen Stewart and think, 'I want to be that role someday.'
I think the key is to give the reader characters they not only care about, but identify with, and to never take away all hope.
I like to jot down ideas on the back of envelopes and to recognise the potential value in small things. I also like the freedom to think without feeling compelled to write too early. Stories are often better if we can hold back and get to know the characters and the sounds of language.
All people are paradoxical. No one is easily reducible, so I like characters who have contradictory impulses or shades of ambiguity. It's fun, and it's fun because it's hard.
I've long been interested in the role of 'minor characters' in major events. This has been the focus of a lot of the fiction and nonfiction I've written.
My only conclusion about structure is that nothing works if you don't have interesting characters and a good story to tell.
I came up through Second City, so I'm used to playing 20 characters every night who are very different from each other. I wouldn't want my career to be any different.
It's weird for me to say I'm lucky when I can't go into a bookstore and have more than five choices if I want to read something about Asian-American characters.
I don't know whether it's audiences or filmmakers who want characters to be likable today, but I don't think actors are afraid of their characters being unlikable.
It was a big deal to me to play characters and feel things and connect to somebody in a fake world.
In my early writing, all of my characters were exactly the same person. They all spoke the same, made the same types of jokes, reacted the same, etc. I think they were all just me in disguise.
I always look for good stories and good characters, and if they're placed in a whodunit, then I'm interested.
You don't buy evil characters lattes. That's not normal behavior.
I'm a character actor and I get lost in these characters, so I think it's only recently that people have begun to connect dots and go, 'Oh, that's the same person that did this, this, this, this and this!' which I take as a compliment. One time somebody called me an illusionist, and that was the nicest thing anyone has ever said.
Beetle Bailey is actually me, in uniform. I've got about 20 characters, and they're all after friends of mine.
There are always leading characters. There are always complex characters; there are very rewarding plays with great directors and tremendous playwrights, yeah. I've done a lot of things with theater that I'm very, very proud of.
I try to write from a point of view with my faith being always present and always there. don't want to write characters where everyone is saved. So this Madea character for me is not saved.
So many of Spielberg's films inspired my imagination growing up. And then there are British films like 'The Full Monty' and 'Waking Ned Devine' that took me to places I really loved, with characters I just thought were amazing. But the films of Luc Besson showed me France - a really cool side of France.
Acting is my first love. There are still so many characters inside of me that are waiting to come out.
I tend to gravitate toward conflicted characters, and a character who is exploring chaos theory and population control and the difficulties of love and family is pretty rich.
You have to create characters - certainly in series TV - who people engage with. They don't have to be nice; you don't have to agree with them. But they do have to be compulsively watchable and believable and human, and you want to know what happens to them.
'The L-Word' was such a great show because of the amazing writing and characters, but maybe because it was such a new concept, people couldn't pick up on it, but I think it was down to the dynamic characters and how well done it was.
When you read a book, the neurons in your brain fire overtime, deciding what the characters are wearing, how they're standing, and what it feels like the first time they kiss. No one shows you. The words make suggestions. Your brain paints the pictures.
I wasn't terribly aware of Catwoman. She was a DC comics character and as a kid, I wasn't terribly fond of the DC comics characters. I was a Marvel boy.
I'm sure there are some commercial applications for Twitter, but they don't really interest me. I mean, 140 characters? I am really not interested in Ashton Kutcher's daily walks. Not for me.
Revising stuff lately, I was shocked to see how often my characters scratched their ankles, felt their feet, and touched their own ears.
I've never really played everyday people. I've played realist roles, but not mere daily life. There was always something incredible happening to my characters.
Having to think so much about fictitious relationships that work or don't work, and with each relationship between characters managing to do one or other of those in its own peculiar way, I spend a lot of time thinking about relationships, real and imagined.
I am looking for strong characters rather than being just a pretty girl. Actresses can do so much more than looking good.
