While we remain a nation decisively shaped by religious faith, our politics and our culture are, in the main, less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. I think this is a good thing - good for our political culture.
In comedy, you have to do all of the same stuff you do in drama and then put the comedy on top of it. You, the actor, are aware of the comedy but the character is oblivious. And you have to have a sense of humor.
I'm always conscious of the fact that a book starts, basically, with a kid in a lap, and a parent reading to them. If I'm not at least understanding that the parent's got to be there, and the kid's got to be there, together, then I don't feel like I'm doing my job. I hope that the language or the dialogue or the way characters interact entertains parents - when I'm playing with my own kids, I'm entertaining myself too, as well as them.
When you start and you're taking the character seriously, it's going to lead down a variety of paths.
When we approached the project, the very first thing we did was take each character and say, "Okay, where would this character be?" We didn't want them to be caricatures of themselves. We wanted them to live and breathe, and grow with the audience and with us.
For us, we just start with the character. We think of Stifler, and that usually just leads to something that's outrageous.
I love comic books, comic book characters and superheroes.
I would like to play some character that's somewhat dramatic. I don't see myself ever becoming that serious, or it sounds weird, but I don't see myself doing something that's really dramatic but somewhat dramatic. I would like to do something that's more real and doesn't have to be laugh out loud funny. I always like whatever I'm involved in... whether it be funny or whether it be somewhat like... I'm not gonna try to get people to really cry.
I relate to most of the characters I play, because I do feel like an outsider.
Ground the main character in stupidity. Hire a good cast and a good crew.
To improv-nerd-out for a second, it's like the most aggressive yes-anding you can do - if someone's like, "Yeah, you're super thin, right?" And you just pull that into a character and do seven more episodes of the podcast and remember to bring that up.
You've never seen anything in the Marvel universe that's as grounded, as gritty, as authentic, and as raw as what these guys did last year [in Season 1 of Daredevil]. What an amazing place to bring this character into, to attempt to up the stakes and to make it more dangerous. Hopefully, we were able to do that. But as far as those movies, my concern is this show.
At the end of the day, it's a show [Daredevil ] not about a superhero, but it's about a man. Hopefully, that's what we're doing with The Punisher, as well. It's an enormous honor to play this character. It's a character that's quite iconic and very important to a lot of people.
I got like a list of things at the beginning. There were ten things that Bryan made for each one of us, and he drew us our own personal picture of our character that was in color. And uh, I just have a copy of it, I think that they're going to do something special with the originals at the end, like presenting them to us.
It's never been a priority for me to concentrate on the likability of the character.
In a series, you really need to stay open-minded. It's not like a play or a film, where you can create and fully commit to your character's back-story.
Interestingly enough, for me, a character like Captain Jack, you feel like you could just continue. The possibilities are endless and limitless. There is any possibility of madness and absurdity that could commence, so you feel that, with this character, you're never really done.
I'm all for whatever it takes to get wherever you need to get with a character, as long as you don't wipe it on me.
I had never experienced anything like the response I got from people for Pirates of the Caribbean, where you meet a 75-year-old woman who had seen Pirates and somehow related to the character, and then five minutes later you meet a six-year-old who says, 'Oh, you're Captain Jack!' What a rush. What a gift. That was the challenge with Wonka, too--to be, in a sense, like Bugs Bunny. I find it magical that a three-year-old can be mesmerized by Bugs, but so can a 40-year-old or an 80-year-old. It's a great challenge to see if you can appeal to that huge an age range.
It's funny what [producer Richard Zanuck said about even though you can't quite place when the book or the story came into your life, and I do vaguely remember roughly five years old reading versions of Alice in Wonderland, but the thing is the characters. You always know the characters. Everyone knows the characters and they're very well-defined characters, which I always thought was fascinating. Most people who haven't read the book definitely know the characters and reference them.
You do a movie, depending on the character, there's some degree of makeup involved, especially when you're playing a vampire and you're all white and kind of dead. Sleeves, regarding costumes, there are generally sleeves, which I appreciate. I think we all do.
After having been confined to a television series - and it's a luxury job - where you can't play anything but one particular character for nine months out of the year, it will make you insane. It didn't affect me. I got out quick enough.
The funny thing is you oddly don't really say goodbye to all the characters you've played. There's like a chest of drawers in your head that you can always access. They're always around. I'm not sure if that's healthy. But they're all there.
You don't have to underestimate your audience anymore. They'd actually like to laugh a little bit. So, the character came to me and once it's got its grips in you, there's nowhere to go.
You always miss them [characters you've played] once you've walked away, but part of them always stays with you too.
