As for most writers, language is vital for me: a writer's ability to render a fictional world - characters, landscape, emotions - into something original that alters or deepens my understanding of both literature and life.
Writing is a solitary endeavor, but not a lonely one. When you write, your world is populated by the characters you invent, and you feel those people filling your life.
I act according to the requirements of the character, and if I try to play the role, then I play it truthfully. In my daily life, I'm a laid-back, peaceful guy. I'm just doing my job to act.
My character Esteban is a guy who really didn't think he was gonna be there at this point in his life. He's in his early 30s. He's got a son. He's raising his son as a single father.
I love it when talented actors can bring characters to life. Anybody who wears their feelings on their sleeve and has a harder, crusty shell - like I do - is definitely protecting an inner sensitivity.
Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary.
The result is a picture that represents so much of what I want and rarely get from a movie - a couple of hours filled with characters who are as exciting as the people I know in real life.
Whenever I work on a part, I look at the world through the filter of the character and I pick things they might use through my observations of real life.
In real life, people are constantly saying one thing and doing another, but if you write your characters that way, the story becomes too hard to follow.
I don't think my approach to acting is all necessarily in service of the character. I think, selfishly, I've put it in service of myself, my perspective on the world and helping my life.
Look, I play all these tough guys and thugs and strong, complex characters. In real life, I am a cringing, neurotic Jewish mess. Can't I for once play that on stage?
What do you do in a novel? You take recognizable characters from your own life, and you fantasize about what they're really like.
To be true to life, a novel must have an ending that is inevitable given the specific personalities of the characters involved. The novelist must not impose an ending upon them.
If my accomplishments frighten someone, it's nothing to do with me - that's to do with them. But the men who are in my life see me as a person - as a woman - not as a character I've played.
People tell me that my appearance in real life is better than on-screen. Perhaps people think I am exactly like the characters I play on TV.
So they've actually - it's not that her character is a singer, but she had ambition to do that at an earlier time in her life. So I've actually sung two or three times now on the show.
I've never judged anybody by how they look or how they dress. I basically judge them on their character. And that's how I lead my own life.
Characters develop as the book progresses, but any that start to bore me end up in the wastepaper basket. In real life, we may have to put up with tedious people, but not in novels.
It was sort of that in-between area when people don't talk about their personal lives. That's the kind of life I think Kerry would be living now if it weren't for the Lopez character sort of outing her.
In my work, I want to convince people that I'm that character. If they know everything about Lesley Manville - private life, all of that stuff - it doesn't help. So the kind of anonymity I enjoy is key.
The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.
