During long car rides to the set, after I study my script, I go onto my iPad to read books and play games.
I've done a number of things based on real people or true stories or based on books, and I'm a great believer that you have to be true to the script.
Reality TV finds talented people. There are no scripts. The editing is what it's all about. Great editing makes those shows.
This was a really big opportunity. This script was even mediocre. The idea was great, but Jay came on with his guys made it great and very specific. It all came together well.
The reflection of the flame in the glass seems to be touching the hand. And you feel the helpless fear of these dismembered parts. This sort of thing can hardly be visualized at the script stage.
Our characters were antiseptic but we weren't. And if you remember what we did on BATMAN, as the scripts were written very funny, we played them very straight.
I would say 80% of the scripts I get are dramas and not comedies or romantic comedies, which is funny because that's what I do every week.
So often, I read scripts and am like, 'This would never happen in real life. It's not trying to be funny. It's trying to be serious.'
If I have a script, I tend to stick to it even if God may be leading me elsewhere in the moment.
I truly believe that God brought this, Dorothy Day script to me, because for a long time up until I was in eight grade - I wanted to be a nun.
Sometimes a script comes along that really makes you sit up and pay attention... 'Life at These Speeds' has an emotional intensity that really kicked me in the guts.
My biggest problem in my life is I'm cheap and I didn't hire a publicist. In every awkward interview, normally actors get these things scripted.
I love to write. I write everything across the board - kids' stories and novels and scripts. I actually would like to give that a go; I'd like to try to be a writer.
Sometimes you do feel a script that glows in your hand the moment you start reading it. By page four of Shakespeare in Love, I said, 'I have to be in this movie.'
I love involving actors at all levels - and they have to know that I want to hear their contributions, with dialogue, with story suggestions, with script changes, whatever.
When I'm the one who sits down and looks at the blank page and writes it out all the way, then I'll call it my script.
And I don't think I'm giving away any secrets here, but there are a lot of terrible scripts in this town.
Script for an actor is like a bible. You carry it with you, you read it over and over, you go to your passages.
My roots are in stand-up, and stand-up is very freeing. There's no script involved; you just fly.
I write scripts to serve as skeletons awaiting the flesh and sinew of images.
Being in front of the camera, you never got to see the whole process from the conception of the script all the way through to the filming process.
