Character Quotes
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Yeah, and the language the "we" has, and the character the "we" has. Because that was the part of the book that I didn't plan out, but the part that I was most curious about as I was writing. You know what you're doing, but you're sometimes still sort of curious as you're writing it.
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I tend to write one character at a time. But I don't write the entirety of one character at a time.
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It is usually in better taste to praise an isolated action or a production of genius, than a man's character as a whole.
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Maybe I'll just become a cartoon character because there's nothing left for me to do in an R-rated comedy.
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We do not see everything in the environment in the complete, totally resolved, explicit character of the photograph. We, in fact, prioritize our seeing.
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If you know what it is before you even start, it's not as interesting. Central to being an actor is pretending, and the adventure of it all. That's why you become a junkie for different kinds of situations. I try to attach myself to people who really inspire me, and directors who are really passionate. That way, I can give myself more fully and trust the impulse behind why the film is being made, and I can be a little more irresponsible in finding out what the character is. I have to worry less about what the character means if I trust the director.
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Sometimes I'll ask the book writer to write a monologue, not to be performed, just as if they were notes for the character.
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There's a certain type of character that you can't help but come in contact with growing up and living in Brooklyn and Long Island. A certain mixture of moxie, heart, and a wise guy sense of humor.
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Every time I create a character, I don't assume they speak like I do, even if they're Australian.
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No one is black and white or good or bad or happy or sad or what have you. All have particular idiosyncrasies that make them fascinating and that's how I tend to approach a character.
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If you want the secondary greatness of recognized talent, focus first on primary greatness of character.
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A man's natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime, whether committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, (or by any other name indicating his true character,) or by millions, calling themselves a government.
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It is a mournful fact that most men, and indeed all men of worldly character, have so much regard to public opinion that they dare not act according to the dictates of their consciences when acting thus would incur the popular frown.
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Fortunately and unfortunately, people don't see me as a character actor. They see me as a leading man or nothing, which makes it really hard to get work.
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Audiences make their minds up about people they see on screen, just like they do in real life. That's what fascinates me in film. You see a character and have to think: is this person different to what I assumed he was when I first saw him?
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Characters take on life sometimes by luck, but I suspect it is when you can write more entirely out of yourself, inside the skin, heart, mind, and soul of a person who is not yourself, that a character becomes in his own right another human being on the page.
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Character is doing what you don't want to do but know you should do.
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Everything you do is different, and you find different chords in every character that you play that strike true with you.
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All of my favorite comedy has always been of the grounded variety. Even 'MacGruber.' I think that MacGruber is a really grounded character.
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The Henty books provide training in history and in many of the highest aspects of human character... American young people should read not a few Henty books, but all 99 of them.
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I find myself feeling like Oscar in 'Sweat' just by virtue of cleaning the tables, wiping the bar down and picking up everybody's glasses - and not making eye contact, because that's the character. These are working-class, blue-collar people. These are the people I grew up with. It gets under your skin.
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In fiction, I have a residual guilt when I focus on story over language or mood or whatever - the more "literary" things. In screenwriting, I don't have that guilt because story is the only thing. Character, dialogue, everything else - they feed into and drive story.
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The color of a person's skin had nothing to do with the content of their character.
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You treat characters like people you meet in life-friends or mentors.
