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?
Even if a story has nothing to do with my life, if I can recognise something of myself in the character and think, 'Oh yeah, that's what I'd do...' Yeah, that's what I look for.
For every character, I think about who they are, their story, what they are, and who they were before their game started. What was their life like? Where did they grow up? What were their parents like?
I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.
When you practice Buddhism, you have to always self-reflect, and you can't avoid your problems. That makes me understand human beings better. I feel that the more I do that in my own life, the more I can see how to play a character.
I think 'Sightseers' was a bit of an epiphany, a massive learning curve, and it gave me loads of confidence to go out there, and also to create a female character which is completely unexpected and defies convention.
My manager got the script for 'Under the Dome,' and I read it and just fell in love with the character. I grew up on Stephen King, and I love his whole aesthetic of the classic American story with supernatural events happening, so it just made sense.
And that's what I really love, is finding a script and fantasizing and going to a different world and kind of portraying a character that is interesting. Because other lives interest us, that's why we read magazines like 'People' and try and fascinat...
Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.
In 'The Giver,' I play a character called Jonas who is a member of this community called Changeless. In this community, everyone is kept at bay emotionally and physically. They receive an injection every morning to control them from feeling things li...
For me it's always about first impressions. I trust my instincts. I love to prepare if it's something that requires training. But I don't like to prepare the psychology too much. I enjoy the psychology of the character but I work better from a first ...
There's a character I played in 'Love in a Cold Climate' - very like my mother. I asked if I could wear a man's shoes and hat to feed the chickens: all things from her. In fact, every part I play has got an enormous amount of her in it.
I hate a movie that will end by telling you that the first thing you should do is learn to love yourself. That is so insulting and condescending, and so meaningless. My characters don't learn to love each other or themselves.
'Boomerang!' I love that movie just because of Halle Berry, Robin Givens, Eddie Murphy, Grace Jones and Eartha Kitt. There were so many characters. As an actress, to see African-American actors be so diverse was different from what I was used to seei...
I love telling stories. I love the intimacy between the writer and reader. When you write sketches it's over in two minutes. When you write a book the characters have to have a bit of emotional depth.
If I just sit here, what am I going to do? I don't have a trade. I don't teach or anything. I just love to make up characters and gradually build a story around them.
I think we take for granted police officers and detectives that walk into some pretty heinous situations, and they really have to be very brave. So I love playing a character that's very brave - someone that kind of dives in the fire to figure out wh...
One of the reasons I love acting is because I'm so interested in other people's lives, and I often incorporate things I hear or observe into my work. I've become a bit of a 'person addict,' and so I like brushing up against lots of different characte...
I work a lot; I love to compose, ponder, and take notes when preparing for a role. I cut all the scenes, collate the images, form the character and shape its personality, then I make meticulous notes and transcribe each scene on my notebook.
I like having pairs of characters to play off each other. I love drawing Batman, but he's more fun with Robin. Batman charges ahead, Robin jumps off the walls. It's fun showing that contrast.
The unknown characters of writing seem to be endowed with an evil of life of their own as though sentient, and fain would wrest themselves forth from the parchment and wreak mischief on whomsoever gazes upon them.
