Our most valuable teachers are our enemies.While our friends can help us in many ways, only our enemies can provide us with the challenge we need to develop tolerance, patience, and compassionthree virtues essential for building character, developing peace of mind, and bringing us true happiness.
I always talk about my characters like they're real people.
Sometimes I am kind of the opposite of my character. But that's the thing about acting, you get to play people who are not like you at all.
With all of the characters I've played, I feel like I've tried to communicate through my eyes and face, as much or more than with words. That's something that I like to watch in films, and something that I like to bring to the characters that I play.
I've been very lucky enough to do all kinds of movies. All the movies that I've done have been very different, and all the characters I've done have been very different. I feel very lucky to have been able to do the movies that I've done.
I'm such a huge fan of television and what's happening in television, right now. You are able to visit characters and visit a story, week to week, push things in a different way than you can in a film, and you are able to go deeper, simply because you have more time. I'm just excited to do that. It's always good to do new things.
One cannot, without reflection, make some into bearers of goodness and others into miscreants, judging them by relative positive or negative criteria. These, like everything else, change according to historical circumstances, the character of a society, the time and subjective points of view.
I don't always understand my characters. I write to understand them better.
But it was this tough little character part that I was playing, a very funny little guy that I invented over a weekend, because I realized I was not contributing to the humor of this thing. And I had to do something.
No not pigeon holed me as an actor, or as a character, or as to what I could do - but what I would do... and the fact is the things you don't do are almost as important as as the things that you do.
Every character actor, in their own little sphere, is the lead.
I think as an actor, it's very exciting when you have a really fully realized, complex, multifaceted character already established.
In every great novel, who is the hero all the time? Not any of the characters, but some unnamed and nameless flame behind them all.
All I wanted to do was read, to be told stories. Stories were full of excitement and emotions and characters that entertained and often inspired.
I feel that the thing about film and particularly about TV, actually, is it's being created now. We're living in the best time so far because there are many more women writing and women directing, women producing, and people are finally catching on to the fact that women want to go and buy tickets to see female characters and more than one in a film. So I actually think it's a very fertile time to be a woman over 40.
I like it when characters are some combination of appealing and maybe flawed or self-interested. I think in terms of scenes, and what I want a scene to achieve, and I think that the psychological realism arises from that.
I just like to inhabit a character really deeply.
What we'd consider a positive role model, I think it's impossible to actually be a role model. You'll have your flaws or defects of character, regardless. You just speak like a positive role model, and that's just something that you're being conscious of, and you make the decision, "I want to say positive things."
I think it's impossible to actually be a role model. I think on some level, you'll have your flaws or defects of character, regardless.
Movie stars exaggerate certain things to let the audience know they're just playing a character, as if they're saying, "Look at me, I'm not really an old man, I'm just playing one." Or "I'm not really a homosexual, I'm just playing a gay character. Or an alcoholic. Or somebody who's mentally impaired." They often do it very successfully and win awards for it.
From my point of view, when I was thinking about the prospect of [Michael Douglas] in this part, I wondered if he would go all the way with it. The reason I was concerned is that, oftentimes, actors - especially movie stars - when they're playing a character who might be perceived as unattractive or eccentric, will wink at the audience while they're doing it.
I thought, "If I could bring these characters [Wonder Boys] to life and lead the audience to react the same way I did, this could be a really special picture." Then I read Michael's [Chabon] novel and got even more enthusiastic about it.
The challenge was the opportunity. When I read the first draft of Steve Kloves' fabulous adaptation - I hadn't read [Michael] Chabon's book at that time - what I was immediately captivated by was this group of characters that were at once so engaging and so messed up.
Here [in Wonder Boys] I had this group of characters where you didn't know which were the important ones or what direction they were heading.
On the surface, Wonder Boys seemed like such a departure from L.A. Confidential - it's funny, it's contemporary, and so on - and yet at a certain point, I had a feeling that reminded me how I felt when I was shooting L.A. Confidential. I analyzed it for a while, and thought about how emotionally involved I was with the characters. Then I realized that in both movies, there are three main male characters and one female, and all of them are struggling to figure out what they're doing with their lives, independent of each other.
