I have always thought if you are going to make a film, it's much better to have an original script that will play to film's strengths.
My study is a converted garage which is largely lined with bookshelves and cardboard boxes filled with manuscripts of my film scripts, plays and books.
I didn't realize that, in doing a documentary, there is this process of discovery. It's not like a film or a play with a set script. It sort of reveals itself.
What I do is just go over and over and over my lines and learn the script so well that I can just be easy and relaxed. That's the way I always work.
I try to leave my work at work, and check my work-baggage at the door before I go outside of here. I'm not a super method actor, and I think that all the answers are inside the script.
I refuse to work evenings or weekends. If a script sees my character meeting for dinner, I put a line through the words and make them meet for lunch.
I knew her work very well and I knew that if she offered me a role in her movie, it wouldn't be something stupid. So I agreed to do the film before I read the script.
I research the role, and if it's a literary character, I read the book, and if it's an historical figure, I research documents and biographies. If it's a fictional character, I work off the script.
I'm an instinctual actor. I don't really talk about it. Usually if I get a script and I'm having trouble with it, I go to sleep and I dream about it because I'm super internal with the way I work.
I get work because I'm primarily a novelist but I've become script doctor. I can work back and forth between French and English.
I try to look at the whole thing and say 'yes' to the projects that I cannot stop thinking about. If I read a script and the subject stays with me - then that's when I want to go to work.
I miss that process of getting the script and reading it and working on it. Every actor has their own way of memorizing their lines, and the whole process of starting to work with the other actors and the director, and doing rehearsals, and going to ...
We go through, I think, six different drafts of each script. And then my shooting it is roughly, you know, fifteen percent of the total work that gets done on a show. Then it's all post-production animation after that.
In daytime, you're shooting an episode a day, which is on average about 90 pages of script a day. That is very hectic. On '90210,' you get to work through it a little more. You're not just flying through it just to get it done.
I was reading through endless junk scripts that were being sent my way. Typically the roles were to play his wife or his girlfriend - leading roles for women were few and far between.
I'm doing another Churchill. I did a Churchill for HBO and that was up to 1939 and there's talk of the war years. They were going to do it this fall, but the script wasn't going to be ready.
Writing is such an industry now. In many ways, that's a good thing, in that it removes all the muse-like mystique and makes it a plain old job, accessible to everyone. But with industry comes jargon. I was aware that jargon was starting to fill those...
a good woman's friends talk a good woman out of being with a good man, and a good man's heart talked that good man out of trying to be with that good woman.. because that good woman was talked out of being with that good man and so that good man stop...
You can become even a co-creator of this universe... an assurance coming from the Ancient Wisdom; provided you bear an appropriate WILL...
There can be so many suggestions and opinions too; What matters is that you acknowledge at your depths and stand by it like a Rock...
Those who want to learn more than bread and butter shall be able to make this world a better place ...
