There are many movies which come with an attitude of black and white. I am good and you are bad. And there are many movies that are also trying to see the reality as it is or to discover what really is behind the character or events.
I came on to the film with a very happy-go-lucky attitude which I think my character, Charlie, did when she went into the house. I expected it to be good, and then slowly things started to change for us all.
I think some of my best theatre training has been in the Marine Corps. Not only meeting a bunch of characters, but growing up. You're in really adult situations at a young age, as far as being in charge of people.
I go back to family: 'Ice Age' was about disparate characters rejected by their own kind. They come together to save the child. 'Despicable Me' is about redefining what a family could be. It has a visual distinction and an experimental quality.
Up until the age of 12, I went to dog shows every weekend. Mum showed beagles. It's a really competitive and eclectic world filled with characters who wear interesting outfits - similar to 'Toddlers & Tiaras,' but with dogs.
When I was working on Eye of the Beholder, I played a character who is so aloof that my whole lifestyle became very aloof. If someone knocked on my door, there was a part of me that went into a rage, because I wanted to be isolated and alone.
You have to understand the tone of the movie, because if it's supposed to be funny, it can be funny violent like the Home Alone stuff, but you have to really understand the tone of what you're doing and make the action work for that and for the chara...
'The Last Of Us,' to me, is just amazing storytelling, because everything's from the character point of view, which even movies don't really do successfully a lot of the time.
I'm not a huge fan of scary movies, but I love doing them because your character arc gets condensed, and everything is elevated, and so you kind of have this amazing opportunity to go in many different places.
I filmed 'Albatross' before I got 'Downton.' It's a coming-of-age movie about this girl who leaps into this family's life, like a whirlwind. She's ballsy and brash and wonderful, it was such an amazing character to play.
I think one of the coolest things about the job is the level of trust we have for each other. The actors fully trust that the writers will write amazing episodes, and the writers trust that the actors will follow their instincts with the characters.
As a kid, I always loved serialized books. It's the reason why people love 'Harry Potter.' Serialization is amazing. It works in television. It works in film and it works in books. Especially when you're a young kid, you get attached to these charact...
My character had been in the chair for seven years. He had gone through his anger, depression, drug and alcohol abuse. He had gone through everything, now he was up, he was happy, he was filled with his dream.
I don't think I could play a character that I couldn't relate to somehow. I'm not unfamiliar with frustration, anger, shame, helplessness and a load of other emotions that make up our psycho-soup. I try to focus on that frustration, that sense of unf...
When I write now I do not invent situation, characters, or actions, but rather structures and discursive forms, textual groupings which are combined according to secret affinities among themselves, as in architecture or the plastic arts.
I've always loved pinup art, and I've always enjoyed drawing women. I think it was a conscious decision that has resulted in me getting almost exclusive work on comics where the main character is female.
There should really not be anything gratuitous in a work of art. Sometimes what seems as if it's gratuitous may be a passage in which a character is being characterized so that the reader comes to know him or her better.
Every once in a while I go off to do a movie or a television series and I take my art with me. I can stay in character when I paint.
Every article on these islands has an almost personal character, which gives this simple life, where all art is unknown, something of the artistic beauty of medieval life.
But there's the paradox of fiction - why do you cry when a fake character dies? It's the basis of art. You engage with people who don't exist and care about them as you would your friends and relatives.
There are risks in the sheer brevity of Twitter, and it's actually quite an elegant art reducing what you have to say to 140 characters, and it's something that I quite enjoy attempting to do.
