When I think of character actors, I think of Spencer Tracy; I think of Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall. When I was a young lad watching films, my eyes were on them - watching 'On the Waterfront,' my eyes are on Rod Steiger and Karl Malden, not on Brando.
A lot of comics aren't their on-screen personas; Chris Rock isn't always ranting and raving. What I do is make myself this over-the-top character that people either find endearing or they think is a joke. Then I can do anything I want.
From slavery to segregation, we remember that America did not always live up to its ideals. In fact, we often fell far short of them. But we also learned that fundamental to our national character is the drive to live out the true meaning of our cree...
I'm not like a Sears Catalog of ideas. I don't have that many ideas. I've more or less written them over the years. Usually, I come up with a situation or a character, and it rattles around in my head until the story or the plot emerges.
I think sometimes I'm more fond of doing the research for the character because you learn so much. Sometimes shooting is really difficult because you wake up early and you're always hurrying. And sometimes I don't know what I'm doing. I'm here and th...
Putin himself is a character out of fiction, an uber-macho former Soviet thug running a massive, expansionist kleptocracy. The man stages photographs riding horses barechested and hunting tigers. His enemies find themselves on the wrong end of radioa...
There was a lot of dancing in '76, '78, in the '80s. A lot of dancing. The burn years. A lot of dancing. And for a while, working fit in with all that. 'Moonlighting' - that wasn't acting. It was people telling me 'Let's create a character who is you...
I don't care about my character here on earth. I don't care about what other people think or say about me, all I care about is my standing before the Lord.
I think what I reacted to so strongly when I first saw 'Pinocchio' was that I identified with the character so strongly. The movie takes you on a whole journey, a rollercoaster of emotions, and that sometimes means some very scary places. But in the ...
I tend to stay in character between scenes... to be rather serious on set, but here's why, and I think people will find it surprising. I'm one of the worst 'corpses' on a movie set, which means you can't keep a straight face. You start to get the gig...
A lot of people have asked me about some of the characters that appear in 'Clockwork Prince,' like Aloysius Starkweather and Woolsey Scott. A lot of people like Woolsey Scott, which I was really happy about because he's very fun to write.
I think you just have to take everything that happens on a TV show with a grain of salt. You sign up for a show for six years having zero idea where they're going to go with the character, so you just have to get on the ride of the show and go with w...
The first night was awful because I was so afraid, and I was never more afraid because it was going out of my character to be outgoing and to be vulnerable and to be out there and onstage. My hands were sweaty and I couldn't swallow, and I drank a bo...
My role models were always the Pacinos and the Oldmans, the guys who get dirty with their characters, and I arrived in L.A. during the big boom of 'Dawson's Creek.' I was getting cast as the boy next door, or the friend of the jock. I thought, 'Did I...
It's like these ideas, these characters, kind of bubble up inside me, and one day they're not there, and the next day they are there. They're alive, and they're whispering in my head and all that stuff, and I want to write about those things.
That's what sets apart one actor from another, and that you can't teach. You can't give someone that. When you're working, putting a character together, or in a scene, that's where things will happen that you have to have the intuition to notice them...
After Lock, Stock, all these really nasty small town characters came knocking at my door trying to tell me stories, and somehow I ended up with this guy whose brother was feeding people to pigs, and that's what he did to get rid of people.
There is no such thing as a perfect person in this world. We all must become the main characters or the stars of our lives. We are all different and start differently. But from whatever is our circumstances, it is very important that we find the oppo...
This is the story, this is your character, I have the sense of the landscape, I have the sense of the scene, I have all that stuff. But I'm also looking for something else to happen, an accident or something. You're focused on the story you intend to...
Certainly, for younger guys, Superman is this mythological character that they've thought about and explored in their imaginations... But one thing I really like about Superman fans is that they're so open-minded and excited and honest. There's somet...
Comic book fans have loved Wolverine, and all the 'X-Men' characters, for more than the action. I think that's what set it apart from many of the other comic books. In the case of Wolverine, when he appeared, he was a revolution really. He was the fi...
