Well, usually when I finish one character, I'm looking for a role that's really different.
It was intimidating to play a deaf character. There's a whole culture in the deaf community and I really wanted to know a lot about that and honor it in the work.
I can't remember when I've liked a character as much as I've liked young Lyle Rettew, or when I've cheered one on so hard, despite the fact that he's clearly crazy and his quest is doomed. A thunderous debut, and the beginning of what will surely be a breathtaking career.
No novel is a clone of any preceding one, though with a background cast of characters and things that has grown to thousands, there are many familiar aspects.
When I know who is speaking, I see that there is a commitment. I need to know there is some commitment. I need to find an author. "I" can also be polyphonic, fictional, inhabited by a multitude of characters, be right or wrong or at fault or corrupted. But that's more "the self" than "me, me, me." It's problematic. There are times to say "we."
It will be very hard to get out of Bond. It will be the pictures I do between Bonds that will color my career, that will give my career longevity after this franchise is over ... I will be stamped with this character for life.
I love these kind of movies as a kind of cinema-going geek myself. Those characters, you want to be like those characters when you go to the movies. You know, when you see a movie with a guy who's really cool and the killing's slick and easy. I don't know. There's something intoxicating about it.
I believe you can only draw from your own life as an actor. All the characters I've played, I only have my infinite eye and the presence of my life to take from.
The thing you do is escape from them by immersing myself in the character you're playing.
Well, I think that in every character there are little bits and pieces of yourself.
A man whose every exertion is bent upon showing up the flaws in his wife's character must be at least partially responsible for some of them.
If a writer is true to his characters they will give him his plot. Observations must play second fiddle to integrity.
I talk to myself on paper about my characters - sometimes writing in first person... I keep lists of unanswered questions that I can always turn to in order to get myself going.
The characters I didn't have actors in mind for, that was the scary moment. Because in any production, until you find the right person, you're constantly judging your writing or what it is that isn't working here or not clicking here, because you have amazing actors coming to read for it, and if something's not clicking, it can't be them because they're amazing actors. You're sort of completely doubting yourself.
A character does seem to have a life of its own, but I have what I'd describe as a very fluid relationship with them - as I'm thinking of what they will be like, they shift in and out of focus - they are a projection of some idea inside of me, even if a character is inspired by an actual person, I'm well aware that it is not that person. My job is to identify the essence of the character, and to bring them to life long enough to commit the acts, say the words or simply "be" in a way that allows them to affect and be affected by other elements and events in the imaginary world of a story.
One particular night I was at the theater. I was not scouting for a project, but I was touched by this play by Évelyne de la Chenelière. I was touched by the character. I thought it was a rich character that could be rich enough for a movie.
If you're writing a screenplay from scratch, it involves a lot of creation. In this play, I had a strong main character and it involved some creation around him. That's what I like about adapting that particular play because I added some maneuvering space as a scriptwriter to invent my own things.
I needed to create some dramatic tension to sustain the interest of the audience. For instance, the boy in the film is not in the play, so this relationship that he had with the former teacher, and his guilt, this is not at all in the play. I thought it would be interesting to look at in the film, and I added stuff like that around the main character. For me, it was not more difficult or less difficult.
It's the same challenge as with any other character, adults or not. You want to take time with the kids. You want to tell them in the audition that they have time to exchange ideas. I'm there. It's not someone else who does the audition, but I don't want to audition a thousand children.
I must point out - Sarah Jessica Parker is not a diva - she's one of these pop culture characters that everybody likes.
A noble heart, like the sun, showeth its greatest countenance in its lowest estate.
There are characters in movies who I call 'film characters.' They don't exist in real life. They exist to play out a scenario. They can be in fantastic films, but they are not real characters; what happens to them is not lifelike.
Ultimately, all characters have some negative and positive energies. That's just how I see it. I didn't go out looking for negative characters; I went out looking for people who have a struggle and a fight to tackle. That's what interests me.
I've worked with a lot of characters that are unhinged. I've played characters that are unhinged. That's, like, my job.
The thought of the novelist lies not in the remarks of his characters or even in their introspection but in the plight he has invented for his characters - in the juxtaposition of those characters and in the lifelike ramifications of the ensemble they make: their density, their substantiality, their lived existence actualized in all its nuanced particulars, is in fact his thought metabolized.
