I think for everyone it's good to have your own personal work on a character and a film before you even start rehearsing, to have an inner life.
It's hard to get lost in a scene, to get into a character when everyone's standing around you on the set.
I was going to play in First Blood, but I suggested to changing it and I dropped out. I said to [Silvester] Stallone, 'You know, I almost stopped you from making millions of dollars,' because in my suggestion, I killed his character at the end of the picture .
Character is everything, especially these days when that's what publishers are asking for. Make sure that yours have child appeal. Also don't have a huge cast of characters. One or two is best, four, the maximum.
A good horror film is something that taps into something absolutely truthful about us - about what we want, about what we're terrified of - and brings that to life on screen in such a way that we can get close enough to that character to let our defenses down and want them to be safe.
Is it more important to make sure that you have another Clinton or a woman in the White House than it is to have somebody who is a morally sound character and judgment?
I'm happy when people come up and say how they feel about what your character went through, you know, I went through and it's helping me deal with it. I get to see the movie through the audience's eyes and that's really gratifying.
I know that sounds contradictory - you're going on a journey, but once you know who your characters are, you become more disciplined and you film less and less.
It makes it very easy. I have a beginning, middle, and end, and I don't film for long - about 20 hours usually for a two-hour film - so it's easily watchable in a week for me and the editor. Once I know who the characters are, I only film those characters, unless somebody else forces their way into the film by a scene happening to them or we meet them by chance.
There's more pressure to be famous for being yourself than if you're being a character.
To be honest, I would have to say that there was a certain burden in working with Arnold, a big action star. I am aware that Arnold is loved by the American audience, but rather than focusing on working with Arnold, what I focused on was expressing the character, Sheriff Owens, through Arnold the actor and knowing that Arnold and my idea about Sheriff Owens coincided and that it was about Owens protecting a certain value and justice, I focused more on that aspect that helped me to be more comfortable in working with Arnold.
I've found that when I'm having trouble solidifying a character or a scene, that music will often free my subconscious just that last little bit to allow me to move forward, and often it's in a direction that I didn't expect, but is 100 percent true to the character.
Imagination helps me to become part of that journey that I'm going through in font of the camera, or in front of an audience. I used to think you had to disappear within a character, but I find that puts a mask on what I do.
You start with a generic body, but I think the first wall you hit with portraiture is comprised of history and storytelling and the nature of characters - whether they are historical or coming from literature or documentation. Those are the references we have to people, besides your family, and the intimacy of portraiture is in the specifics of individuals. For me, it came out of doing things about animals.
Phonogram is the memory of a long period in my life through a surprisingly small filter. Those characters are basically the golem who accompanied me on that decade and a half.
It doesn't really matter how you feel about your character; it just matters what you do with it.
I think the thing about the Internet is that it has so many characteristics that can be easily construed to be similar or almost identical to print that it can be misleading.
The things that have always drawn me to the craft of writing is character, it's story, it's something that becomes like a pebble in my shoe, a voice that I just can't get rid of, and I've got to see it through.
The story line of my novel [The Kite Runner] is largely fictional. The characters were invented and the plot imagined.
Have we become so celebrity-obsessed that there is no longer a difference between a character and an actor? I hope not.
I dont categorize characters into one syllable. These are fully-rounded characters that I dont judge; I just play them.
Audiences grew to like this duality of feeling, where youre both championing a character and youre revolted by them.
Cable TV has become where the best actors, writers and directors have gone to work because they are allowed to do character-driven stories.
Games are advancing in terms of storytelling and trying to create a character, and its a brand new audience for me.
Im able to hang up the character with the costume at the end of the movie.
