I try to keep my characters raising more questions than giving answers. I don't want to leave too much on the table. I want you to have your connection and your secret understanding of the character.
I find it inspiring and I always think when I'm working on something new, whether it's a new kind of character or a new kind of story or new kind of camera, it gets my creative wheels spinning.
I happen to still like really dark, dramatic, fractured characters. They're the reason I got into movies.
The fact that 'Astro Boy' appealed to me as a boy in America was proof that the story and character transcend cultural stereotypes.
I don't want a perfect character, I want a character who has, as strange as it sounds, some humanity, some flaws, some needs.
At a young age, I was interested in comic books, which was really how I learnt to read. The name Cage came from a comic book character called Power Man.
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.
There is a misperception, if you will, in critical response or even in Hollywood, that I can only do exaggerated characters. Or what they would call over-the-top performances. Well, this is completely false.
I'm not really interested in playing famous people. I prefer to create characters. And I hope I have an exciting enough life that somebody might make a movie about that one day. I don't want to make movies about other people. I was once approached about playing Salvador Dali, which I thought would've been fun until I found out that he was proud of kicking a blind man across the street. So, I decided, I didn't want to play that guy. So, I think I'll just keep it the way it is.
Actors work with their look. I come from the Lon Chaney Sr. school of acting. I'll wear wigs, I'll wear nose pieces, I'll wear green contact lenses in my eyes. I'll do whatever I need to do to create a character.
All of my characters have a glint of madness.
I hit the ground running, without a lot of training, so I had to do whatever I could do to survive as a professional, and if that meant being that character 24/7 and acting out, I was going to do that. I lived those characters, I brought them home with me.
I think anything that opens my mind and triggers my imagination I'm reading. I like to read science fiction and imagine the character. Anything that keeps my imagination flowing.
Here's my take on Instagram: It's so ridiculous that people can go on and play characters, and none of it [should be] taken too seriously.
You reveal your own character most clearly when you describe someone else's.
I don’t find it fun watching someone trying to be sexy. It’s whack. I’m trying to just show my true personality, and I think that means more than anything else. I think when personality is at the forefront, its not about male or female, its just about, who is this weird character?
Every woman is a character - but people need to see I'm a regular human. It's like you wear a pink wig and you're no longer human all of sudden.
I look at rap as an opportunity to act. My head is full of different characters - in each song I'm auditioning a character.
People are writing shorter jokes. The style I've started with was almost trying to keep jokes under 140 characters before Twitter.
It's rare that I've read a script where I'm like, "Oh, my god, it's hilarious!" All you want is a good skeleton and good characters. Then, you can go, "Okay, I can bring a lot to this. I can improvise and I can create something out of this."
Well, it was very interesting to play a character and stretch it over such a long time - 12 episodes. I had never done a TV show before, so week to week it was unclear what we would be asked to do.
I put my heart and soul into my book - great story and awesome characters... yet people are trying to pull me down.
I first read Wendell Berry's short-story collections, "Fidelity" and then "Watch with Me." They just knocked my socks off. The characters and the fellowship of the small town reminded me of my own small town in Illinois.Then I discovered that, much like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, that all of Berry's fiction was centered in this same town.
I'm quite excited to not play a Xena type character - it's probably closer to me than any character I've ever played.
No one thinks they're irritating. Nobody thinks they're boring. So if you're playing a character like that you have to play them as how they think of themselves.
