Sometimes I aid into the confusion by having my character's name be my name.
Because I just loved to spend two years of my life in the company of Andy Kaufman and other characters.
People forget that actors are actors, who are looking to put on the clothes and the character, and then shed it just as easily.
For me, what grabs my attention about the project is usually the character immediately and then the story, and then the people that are involved.
You have to have sympathy for the villain. Even the most disgusting ones, you have to find something to connect with. I try to put as much of myself in every single character that I play.
[With] this show [This Is Us], I don't think I was seeking something outside of the world I'd always played in so much as I'm ruled by characters. If it's a great character, I'm invested. It doesn't matter what the genre, what the storyline, anything.
An audience gets to hang onto the characters for the rest of their lives if they want. I think it's great that the fans do that. It's just not too practical for a man like myself because I have to move on.
My job is always going to change; the characters that I'm playing are always going to change. I look forward to playing a grandfather at some point.
I don't feel the pressure to deliver an unrealistically great man to the screen; I just want to be honest to who my character is on the page. If I can reflect that and put some heart into him and make him real, then I think I've done my job, and I think that people will like who he is.
I think I had the good fortune to watch Sly the Artist [Sylvester Stallone]; to watch him in all arenas. As an actor, not many people get to see him turn that character on, they don't understand that he's playing a role.
I think with actors, we tend to get rid of characters - and not get rid of them as in discard them or throw them away, but it's just that you take that jacket off because you're going to be putting a different jacket on.
I felt violated after certain scenes in the movie [Stone]. She [Lucetta] is a tough character. The choices she makes, especially her sexual choices... it was hard for me to put myself out there like that.
When I did The Fifth Element [1997], it was like, "Oh my goodness, who is this character?" I loved doing Resident Evil, but Resident Evil is Resident Evil with or without me. It's an entity of its own. It's not like Milla made Resident Evil.
Being me is funny. I've made this weird character, and I think it's really funny.
I'm just enjoying playing a character of myself. People's mouths drop when I dance, but my friends are like, "You dance like that in the kitchen!"
I went from people just thinking I was, like, a baby to people thinking I’m this, like, sex freak that really just pops molly and does lines all day. It’s like, 'Has anyone ever heard of rock 'n' roll?' There’s a sex scene in pretty much every single movie, and they go, 'Well, that’s a character.' Well, that’s a character. I don’t really dress as a teddy bear and, like, twerk on Robin Thicke, you know?
The reason I never want a book to end is that I start to feel like the characters are my friends. I'll miss them when they're gone.
People do not understand that what I do on stage is a character, my fans know who I truly am.
I think when you're looking for scripts or for characters around your own age, a lot of the times they don't have the kind of responsibility that is usually seen in parts that are older for you.
I start a boxing movie and that's kind of something I've been able to get to the gym for. It's great anytime you can parallel a skill that your character has. I just think it makes it even more rewarding.
I just really enjoyed all that kind of responsibility, I loved the fact that many people cared. I was doing 4 hours of boxing, 2 hours of weights, an hours of accent and dialect training, I just enjoyed having to do all that for this character [ Vinnie Paz in Bleed for This].
I think my character rallies people together to go out and drink.
We liked the idea of introducing the audience to the world, and to show how much they had accepted or were confused by it. It was gratifying to see the people who embraced it immediately and understood it and got into it. They have tracked the characters through the six episodes, so it felt that now we can launch into the journey element of it. And really explore more of the Badlands.
I think we're always trying to avoid tropes. And I think that "Game of Thrones" has almost made killing people a cliche. For us, it wasn't about that. For six episodes, it's hard to invest in people, and I think when you kill a main character on television it really needs to mean something. So we certainly had talked about that, and I think we managed to juggle the ball to make a gripping, interesting and compelling finale. We feel that we didn't have to go there at this point because we had such few episodes.
We knew Terry Brooks' work, but we hadn't read the Shannara books. So, they sent us the book to read and we just loved the story and the characters. We thought it would make a very compelling season of television. We were like, "Someone is going to make this. Why don't we do it?"
