I love the TV show, and if you make a bad movie it means you've soiled it. Just like if we made an advert. We were offered so many times and I'd say, look, this is the good thing, and you can't compromise that, because then you compromise the integrity of the characters.
For me, one of the most important things I look for in an actor is whether we can converse. Do we have a similar ability to discuss a character?
I would really like to do a really cool one-hour show, maybe on like HBO or something like that; or something that Ive spent a couple of years developing so it would be exactly the character and exactly in with a huge push behind it; or I would maybe want to do a sitcom; something light and funny.
[Having perosonal trainer for the movie 'The back-up plan'] I felt like I had just given birth. He was like, "You can't eat anything but this. You've got to do what I say." So along with doing the film, I did this kind of disciplined workout regimen, because every cheese farmer is ripped and buff, and I wanted to be true to character, because I'm Method. But it took a lot of hard work to get there. You can rest assured in the fact that it's all gone now.
I'm always terrified before every movie because I haven't found her [the character], and I don't get it. [Without acting, I'd have] become a nurse.
But really, for the most part - doing a prequel is great because you do have room to kind of free this character and how they got to where they are instead of being a slave to exactly what the previous actor did.
I want to play a character I've never been before-a crazy serial killer like Charlize Theron in Monster. I'd love to have to shave my head.
I do have some kind of gravitational pull towards young characters with more responsibility than they should have.
I like as much time as I can get and I'll do whatever I think is helpful to prepare for a role. Sometimes it's practical research, meaning if I had to write shorthand, I'd learn how to write shorthand. Or if I have to know how to dance a certain way, I would learn that. And then there's just research of talking to people similar to the characters I'm playing. And there's stuff that I just feel is inspiring, whether it be music or a painting or a photograph. I've used a lot of Nan Goldin's photos in the past to inspire me. I use certain paintings and pieces of music.
I think Robert Altman could see things in me that I didn't know I possessed, which is really exciting. He also instilled a tremendous amount of confidence, because he would say things like, "These are the bare bones, but I want you to go fill it out. You find the character. You bring it to me. You write whatever you want." And if you had an idea, he wouldn't want to hear about it. He's want you to show it to him.
Even when you think you can detach yourself from the characters, you don't. Because you're spending so much time trying to realize this person and make them real that they do infect you, in a way. And you do take them home and live with them, even if you think you're turning the character off. But in order to pull off a role convincingly, you wind up thinking about that person all the time, and it does sort of creep into you. And then there are things that you'll respond to, or react to in a very different way than you would normally.
My first two novels were set in the past, and that freed me up in a lot of ways; it allowed me to find my way into my story and my characters through research.
But I always need to identify with a character to write about him or her - and by "identify," I mean see the world through that person's eyes and have a strong sense of the inner logic of their acts and decisions, wacky or wrongheaded though they might be. In that sense, I think there's some of me in all of them.
Oftentimes what happens is that the writer understands one character, but they don't understand the other one, and the other one ends up not being written as well.
What is their potential for evil; what is their potential for wickedness? That's the only time that those characters become interesting to watch.
We can have the final word on hate, neglect, disease and all the other insidious characters that still script their way into our stories...for now, but not forever.
That character in Solitary Man is probably most like me in real life: a solid person who has a good head on her shoulders and is very driven and practical, and not afraid to set boundaries. That's sort of my center. I come from the same place as the character in Solitary Man.
I think I am an actress and I'm artistic and I love spontaneity and all of that, but I just decided really early on that if I didn't also try to ground myself I would probably end up like this character of Laura in A Little Help , or like so many young people in Hollywood, sort of go off the rails. So I'm pretty attached to my routines and my grounded ways.
It's so easy to disappear into your character because there isn't all this fuss around you, and we keep a closed set, and closed off to all crew members, even, unless we're cut. A lot of times, you're doing a scene in a movie and there are literally 35 people standing behind the camera all waiting to do their job, but here they have to be off the stage. On The Office, it is very much just the actors, a cameraman and a boom operator, like a real documentary, like we really are being documented.
Writers know - especially new writers - [that] a lot of it [creative process] is the prewriting stage, the talking, brainstorming, the narrative arc and the character sketches.
I don't set out to write female lead shows, necessarily. I like deeply flawed characters. When they come to me, or when I'm introduced to them, I follow the stories and the people, rather than setting out to do a female lead thing.
We watched these auditions and could only pick one. Sometimes we would add new characters 'cause we wanted to use another actress. There were so many people who were just waiting for something like this.
No matter who the characters are, you can strip them down and find small universal truths.
Expressing political opinion can be a powerful way to establish a character's voice when writing fiction.
New York is the greatest character actor ever. Any film that is shot in New York is elevated by the city.
