I've got a New Zealand film coming out here called Out of the Blue. It's a very heavy story, and it's the first time I've played a character who is alive.
Beauty with character ages better than perfection.
Tobias Buckell combines old world with new in his novel CRYSTAL RAIN. While the rich cultures, drawn in part from Caribbean history and lore, echo a familiar landscape, he brings it out of the Earth milieu and into a bold new universe where technology and tradition collide. I enjoyed his colorful characters and musical use of language; his voice is fresh and entirely readable.
When I read a film script, I kind of see it in my head and I see the moments that shape what I understand the character to be. There's very little time for rehearsal.
Journeys become very good metaphors. They always have the character put into circumstances that reveal him. If I had based my characters in New York and had them just sitting and thinking about life, it would be like what contemporary U.S. fiction is about. That is very heavy, literally, for me. It doesn't become mainstream enough because the pages don't turn themselves.
I guess every character has a little bit of the actor - I guess for every character you play, the actor has to allow a little bit of their own character to show through.
I would have to say that I have to concentrate more when I'm doing comedy. There are so many details that make up any character, but developing a character for a dramatic role seems to come more naturally.
Listen and learn: you need fourteen characters, minimum. Use random letters, not words. Here’s a tip: think of a sentence, and use the first letter in each of those words. Mix it up between upper and lower case. Then pick two numbers that mean something to you – not dates – and stick them somewhere between the letters. Put a punctuation mark at the beginning of the password and then a symbol, like a dollar sign, at the end.
I try not to divide plot and character. I get to know a character by what they want and fear and how those internal forces play out in their lives.
the less you respect, the less respectable you are; the less you honor, the less in you is to be honored. There are those 'whom not to know argues one's self unknown,' so if you have no reverence in a world where there is so much that is noble and venerable, then there will be something terrible lacking in your own character.
I started writing morning pages just to keep my hand in, you know, just because I was a writer and I didn't know what else to do but write. And then one day as I was writing, a character came sort of strolling in and I realized, Oh my God, I don't have to be just a screenwriter. I can write novels.
I'm really quite bad at coming up with plot ideas. I like to create characters and just see what will happen to them when I let them loose!
My Family and Other Saints echoes Gerald Durrell's classic memoir, My Family and Other Animals, not only in its title, but in its wonderful humor and lyrical prose. Like Durrell, Kirin Narayan takes the reader to a fascinating world far from our own, and brings to life its myriad sights, sounds and smells, while revealing the profound cultural beliefs of its people. India is just the most complex character among a cast of characters-family members, gurus, hippies, and neighbors-all of whom I now count as old friends.
Every so often you get to play wonderful characters maybe at the wrong time in your life. Sometimes, you get to play terrible characters at a really great time in your life. Sometimes, the right character comes along at the right time.
I don't like to read books where I feel as though I've stepped into the middle of things and don't know what's going on. I like to see characters I've met before, but I don't want to feel left out because I haven't read other books in the series.
There should really not be anything gratuitous in a work of art. Sometimes what seems as if it's gratuitous may be a passage in which a character is being characterized so that the reader comes to know him or her better.
I want every character be an outsider in some way.
Everybody said, You hit it so big when you were on Ally McBeal. I didnt do anything for a year after Ally McBeal, and I had to write David Kelley to get myself back on Ally a second time because I thought the character should be on again.
I always knew I wanted to be a character in the movies. When I was growing up, I had to have a lot of surgery, and I spent a lot of time recovering at home and in the hospital. Watching movies took me away from my own problems and gave me a total escape.
I know you've all heard the advice, "Show, don't tell." The best writers don't tell you, and quite frankly they don't just show you -- they make you feel it, live it, taste it, touch it. Storytelling is about being in the moment with the characters.
I look for the character to be something interesting, the script to have a good story and be original, and a director that I admire.
I get bored with the same old film coming out every weekend. It feels like it's the same story all the time, and the same visuals, and the characters' dilemmas are remarkably similar.
It's more interesting when people overcome inner turbulence, but at the same time I do like the innocent. Have you ever read The Idiot? I think Dostoyevsky created a brilliant character there. He doesn't have any self-inflicted wounds. I love that. People don't like him because he's so pure.
I always find that I have to be emotionally on my character's side for it to be convincing.
Any time you get to dig deeper into your character, you welcome it, especially on a TV show.
