Character Quotes - Page 361

I know Bret Easton Ellis has said he has some amount of empathy for every character he has written about, though, so maybe I am similar to him in terms of that. I'm not sure what he thinks exactly.

When I was acting, I got trained in creating a character as a three-dimensional person. If you're doing it right you should be able to draw an audience into the character's world and make them feel their fears.

If you're writing a scene for a character with whom you disagree in every way, you still need to show how that character is absolutely justified in his or her own mind, or the scene will come across as being about the author's views rather than about the character's.

If you steal other people's characters, it doesn't work with the context of the scripts and what is written, so I wanted to make her my own. I was petrified, in the beginning, because it's such an iconic character, especially being a young lady myself.

I actually love doing period pieces, purely because it takes you into a different world, mentally. The clothes you have to wear are so far from our everyday clothes that it immediately helps with the character and putting you in that mind frame.

I don't think I've ever done a character like this before, so I couldn't really draw from previous roles. I've been known for doing a lot of comedies in England, so I don't think that would have worked. I completely went from scratch, with this one, and used the research and what was in the script, and spoke to Chris. It's all from in my mind ,rather than drawing from previous experiences or roles.

One of the things I strive for is realism. I need to be as real as possible in the dilemmas my characters face.

I'd like to find whoever taught the Stump that extra work builds character and push him down the stairs," Neal told Kel at lunch.

How one stands up to any sort of allegation in the heat of political battle reveals the strength and nature of your character. It's one of the reasons we have campaigns.

History is basically really looking back and finding out what happened to an individual, a community, a family, a group in a certain event. And so that's why I go, "Wow. That's what acting really is. You find out the background, you get the joy of creating a fictional history of a fictional character and you get to tell a story." So I felt that acting is making history come alive and it became my mode of trying to figure out what this craft of acting is really all about.

What I had found after the success of Karate Kid II is that an actor basically needs to - a primary requirement on my part as how I view as actor is you have to create a background, you have to create a history of that character and place her into the script that you're reading and carry on forward because you don't know how the future unfolds. This is what storytelling is you place a certain set of circumstances with a certain set of characters and you see what unfolds after an event happens.

I love people like Kate Bush and Stevie Nicks and David Bowie - people that project themselves as characters and that contextualizes the music.

Obviously, once you're finished, you're like, "Okay, I have to make this a movie now, and I need people - bodies to play these parts, and actors to bring this thing beyond a script." But when I was writing it, I wasn't thinking of actors; I was really thinking about creating three-dimensional characters.

I think I'm a good judge of character.

I believe you shouldn't force the audience's interpretation of a character or a story. The more you explain things, the less intriguing and imaginable they are for viewers. . . . Film to me, in its essence, in its ultimate nature, is silent. Music and dialogue are there to fill what is lacking in the image. But you should be able to tell the story with moving pictures alone. For my next project, though, I'd like to make the kind of film where the characters blabber all the time.

Sometimes I think too much, or sometimes I don't think enough as the character. Sometimes you just miss a moment, or sometimes you hear something that a character's saying that you haven't heard before and you react differently.

I don't have any room in my heart for that character [Kevin McCallister ]. I like the actor [Macaulay Culkin], but the character, no.

Leonard Cohen can give you "Leonard Cohen" - the self-deprecating wit, the slow, considered speech, the perfectly-honed anecdote - Tom Waits is far more comfortable giving a journalist "Tom Waits" the character, whose conversation is really a series of strange tales, learned or ad-libbed.

The difference between fiction and journalism is that you can disguise the characters, so you won't get your legs broken, and there's no interview tapes to transcribe.

I had to bite back a laugh. "Cary Taylor. Loving you isn't a character defect." Chapter 12, pg 213

If I'd made it right away as an actor, I would've stopped at a certain level and stayed there, probably as a character actor.

Certain characters, mostly heroes, have to be the straight silent type; that is part of the make-up.

The idea of Rambo is kind of intriguing as a closing chapter. When you shoot a film as a sequel to do another sequel it's a whole other tone. But when you know it's the final chapter you try and put in there as much emotion, understanding and closure as you can. So, whereas Rocky is a lighter character and optimistic, Rambo is much darker.

I've always boxed a certain way. But with Rocky, the character himself had to be kind of awkward. So I had to learn to fight that way.

When I tried to play characters that strayed from who I am it ended in disaster. People didn't expect me in comedies or musicals.