I'm not first and foremost interested in story and the what-happens, but I'm interested in who's telling it and how they're telling it and the effects of whatever happened on the characters and the people.
I think that's what makes characters interesting - when you paint a person into a corner, and you see what they do to get out of that corner. It's what makes drama drama.
I think all those actors from that generation, like Bogart - they were wonderful actors. They didn't act. They just came on and they did it, and the characters were wonderful.
What a person praises is perhaps a surer standard, even than what he condemns, of his own character, information and abilities.
As a matter of writing philosophy, if there is one, I try not to ever plot a story. I try to write it from the character's point of view and see where it goes.
I don't think the Hulk is a superhero. He's the first Marvel character who is a tragic monster. Really an anti-hero.
And very often the influence exerted on a person's character by the amount of his income is hardly less, if it is less, than that exerted by the way in which it is earned.
The reason why parents mistreat their children has less to do with character and temperament than with the fact that they were mistreated themselves and were not permitted to defend themselves.
Using clothes to transform was a huge part of my childhood. But also, I've been acting forever, and wardrobe changes the way you feel, so it totally indicates the character you're going to play.
Fiction allows you to embody certain ideas and give them an emotional reality. The characters allow you to get close viscerally to an idea.
He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid.
The actor should not play a part. Like the Aeolian harps that used to be hung in the trees to be played only by the breeze, the actor should be an instrument played upon by the character he depicts.
The characters in 'Be Near Me' come from a genuine place, a Britain that is more than one country and more than one ideal.
I consider myself absolutely a character actor, and that's what I want as a career. I don't need to be the lead star or any of that, as long as I'm doing stuff that I'm proud of, really.
I think the least stereotypical gay character on television is probably Matt LeBlanc on 'Episodes.' He just plays it so straight-faced. They never talk about the fact that he's such a huge gay person.
I do believe, and I will always believe, that Shakespeare on film is really something that should be tried more often because it is an opportunity to take the humanity that Shakespeare writes into characters and express it.
What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.
Wherever I go in the world, people all know about Scotland Street and are always asking me about what's going to happen to the characters next.
I do listen to myself sometimes and think, 'Is my moral compass so easily swayed by the characters I play, or is it me growing as a human being?'
When you do animation - well, straightforward animation, although it's not straightforward - the voice for a character or something, they're always singular experiences, really.
Rascals are always sociable, more's the pity! and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others' company.
