Sometimes I'll go on a Twitter spree and reply as much as I can. Talking to my fans is so much fun even if it is in 140 characters or less.
To have the beginning of a truly great story, you need to have a character you're completely and utterly obsessed with. Without obsession, to the point of a maddening addiction,there's no point to continue.
Perhaps a book becomes a classic in proportion to how broadly its characters can be scavenged, how many readers find within it something they experience as desirable or even intimately necessary.
I don't always set stories in villages, more often in towns. But always in smallish communities because the characters' actions are more visible there, and the dramatic tension is heightened.
I've had my share of villains and played some fairly nasty characters. But I've been acting for so long. I started out as the girl next door. Now I'm the grandmother next door.
It's a basic tenet you learn at drama school. If you're playing someone evil, you can't make an objective moral judgment. You've got to get inside the character and empathize as much as possible.
Hip-hop, which is my generation's blues, is important to the characters that I write about. They use hip-hop to understand the world through language.
Most people carry their demons around with them, buried down deep inside. Writers wrestle their demons to the surface, fling them onto the page, then call them characters.
Actors are hard to photograph because they never want to reveal who they are. You don't know if you're getting a character from a Chekhov play or a Polanski film. It depends what mood they're in.
Nearly every parent on earth operates on the assumption that character matters a lot to the life outcomes of their children. Nearly every government antipoverty program operates on the assumption that it doesn’t.
Music... will help dissolve your perplexities and purify your character and sensibilities, and in time of care and sorrow, will keep a fountain of joy alive in you.
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.
I couldn't do any of my other characters, you know? But I could have done the lady. Church Lady's Malibu Beach party is an idea I have for a movie, too. Yes.
The Simpsons can go anywhere in the world and not worry about any budgetary issues. However, even when the show has had its run, I think the characters can go on in perpetuity.
It's the weirdest thing. When you go into acting, you expect to be a huge star and to be recognized... It did happen, but not in the way you expect it to... In L.A., I'm just another character actor.
Because they feel that without them telling you to do this, you wouldn't have had the characters that you have, you wouldn't have the book that you have.
I think I would have been so much in awe of the movie set, the people and what everybody's job was, that I don't know if I would be able to concentrate on the character.
If you watch young children play, you will notice that they create games, characters, situations, whole worlds in which they immerse themselves with intense concentration.
I look to challenge myself with a character that's not like myself or anything I've done before, but I certainly don't reject roles based on how often I've done them.
To be honest, I think for part of my late teens my character didn't really develop very much. I was in a state of cold storage.
Rise to the challenges that life presents you. You can't develop genuine character and ability by sidestepping adversity and struggle.
