Middle-class Pakistani cultural life is what I've seen, what I know - they're not all screaming faceless mullahs. It's disturbing that in American films, the character on the other side is not even named.
I'd say that on 'Friends' my character was the guy bouncing around the room. I'm no longer that guy, necessarily, in my life. I used to be. But I'm not now.
We have gotten away from this double aspect of either putting the character back into historical events or of making a historical event of his very life.
He's meant to be that classic Homer, Ulysses, Hercules - a character who goes out or has some gift of some kind. He goes on a journey of discovery and part of that is falling into darkness - the temptations of life.
The cast, led by the extraordinary Jennifer Lawrence, is absolutely wonderful across the board. It's such a pleasure to see how they've embodied the characters and brought them to life.
The character of Rosie is based on a woman who used to live in the same apartment building I lived in many years ago. She's taken on a life of her own, of course.
What I've always tried to find in my books are points at which the private lives of the characters, and also my own, intersect with the public life of the culture.
The fact that my female characters have strong personalities but are also physically attractive probably reflects the women I've known in my life.
You've got to be happy when you play a sad character; otherwise, you just get depressed. Make your real life as fun as possible.
One of the reasons I began to write was because I wanted stories for my children where the characters spoke as they did and had similar life experiences.
I don't want to write lines where characters tell me exactly how they feel; I want to see people talk about anything but their feelings, like they do in real life.
Grandeur of character lies wholly in force of soul, that is, in the force of thought, moral principle, and love, and this may be found in the humblest condition of life.
Getting to meet people that I've admired my entire life, and getting to meet them in such a way where they're coming in to play completely different characters than I had ever seen them do is just wonderful.
I think I've spent so much time playing characters that are so far away from me and learning how to technically build and how to technically put something on top of you.
At the very core of my relationship to learning is the idea that we should be as organic as possible. We need to cultivate a deeply refined introspective sense, and build our relationship to learning around our nuance of character.
I've done some TV and I've done a lot of theater, obviously, and the last character I played on Broadway was a very fast-talking broad. I'm used to learning material and words.
One of my favourite kinds of movie is the American picaresque, in which the characters make their way across the country, learning about life against the gorgeous backdrops of that vast land.
I love the characters not knowing everything and the reader knowing more than them. There's more mischief in that and more room for seriousness, too.
Because I like theatre and I love a challenge. With 'ZEBRA!' I've found a new Australian play where I can create a character first - that's what I live to do.
I love developing children as characters. Children rarely have important roles in literary fiction - they are usually defined as cute or precious, or they create a plot by being kidnapped or dying.
I used to love 'Murphy Brown' as a kid. I didn't even understand half of the jokes that were going on, but I loved the character so much that they stood out.
