The key to this collaboration - which we undertook after much deliberation - was to stretch creatively. New characters, new locales, new form (the novella).
The characters emerge from my rather twisted mind. That's another enjoyable part of the job making stuff up.
People have these ideas of what you're supposed to do to have a career, like play against type, or don't revisit a character. I'm just not that precious.
Superheroes are modern mythological characters, so you're going to make them look impossible. Even my Krypto The Superdog is the idealisation of the canine form.
So much of comics are dictated by characters talking to one another - or in focused spaces where 'the camera' has to stay in pretty close on what's going on.
Our bodies will be recycled one way or another, but what about our ideas and minds and characters? Primordial soup? The bourne from which no traveller returns? Interesting and exciting.
If you can't laugh at your own characters, or shed a tear for them, or even get angry at one of them, no one else will either.
You should be watching 'Red Band Society' because it's a show that inspires us to live. I feel like you'll get connected to these characters, and they teach you something that you can apply to your daily life.
I don't believe novels should carry an obvious message. I don't want to write characters you can immediately say are good or bad; as in life, most people are a mixture.
Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the excitement of the moment has passed.
Jesus said, 'Greater things of these you shall do...' Become a peace builder, a bridge builder, not a destroyer, and the way you do that is through friendships and relationships, and through authentic character.
I like to build a character, trying to stretch my imagination as far to the walls of my brain as I can to come up with something that feels truthful and feels real - as close to the skin as I can get it.
Every film is faced with the enemy of time. Only so much story can fit into the 90-150 minutes of time that moviegoers are willing to stay in their seats. Naturally, compression is necessary. So are the exclusion and amalgamation of characters so tha...
I like to hide behind the characters I play. Despite the public perception, I am a very private person who has a hard time with the fame thing.
The Indian community in Canada has integrated much better than the Indian community in United States. They've become really Canadian at the same time as keeping all their Indian characters and customs and social groups.
I've had some interesting roles along the way, but they tend to be cause-driven. They're always about something. There isn't time for character work as an actor because you're fighting the cause or mourning the child or fighting the disease, etc.
I put a lot of time and energy and thought behind what I do and the characters that I create, and I don't want to do anything peripheral that is going to make an audience see me up there on the screen rather than who I'm playing.
I was embarrassingly well-versed in Marvel lore, so it was pretty easy to slip into that world. But really, already, by the time I'd started writing superhero comics, my dream was really to be writing my own characters.
With 'Sin Nombre,' there are parts that I wish were longer. And with 'Jane Eyre' especially, there were parts that I had to compress that I thought it would have been really nice to spend more time with - to spend with the characters.
I don't know that 'NCIS: Los Angeles' is a complete reinvention, but I'm playing one of the guys in charge this time. Before I'd be cast as a young impressionable character. I think part of that is just being more mature.
When I start thinking about a role, I read the script a few times and then let it sink in - and then take some time to develop how that character is going to play out and what he's going to do.
