There've been many a season where I couldn't get work, and I think that you learn character development and you learn how to really want what you do in life when you can't really do it.
At the end of the day, if I can say that I had a career where I was able to play all different kinds of characters and I'm known as someone who is well-respected for my approach to the craft, that would be a beautiful life.
When I was in theater I was forever trying to inhabit a space which puts yourself under the microscope as an actor and your personality and your take on life, but actually through another portal of a character.
I expect that any day now, I will have said all I have to say; I'll have used up all my characters, and then I'll be free to get on with my real life.
'The Butler' has virtually nothing in common with its source material, the life of White House butler Gene Allen, except for the fact that the main character of the film and Allen were both black butlers in the White House.
A lot of illustrators have one central character and then they develop it, and all their books are based around it. But that was not my wish. I wanted to introduce children to the whole creative side of many aspects of life.
I've been telling everyone for weeks now about how I get to play Lois Lane. It's a big deal. There are a few characters throughout your life which everyone knows and this is one of them. I can't wait.
The movies I've made at a certain time of my life were exactly right for the stage of my life, the frame of mind I was in at the time. Each character I've had to play has been me in that time in my life.
I'm extremely happy, but I don't do love songs for the most part. It feels weird; that's such a personal thing to me. I'd rather live that in my real life and play a different character outside of that.
It is a mistake to suppose that the Supreme Court is either honoured or helped by being spoken of as beyond criticism. On the contrary, the life and character of its justices should be the objects of constant watchfulness by all, and its judgments su...
I have quite a rich inner life, and I'm constantly looking for a way to express that. I haven't found it yet in acting. When you're playing a character, you're only going to find outlets for very specific parts of your inner world.
As we mature and grow older we collect a lot of baggage, and a lot of that stuff you collect on life's journey gets in the way of acting. My kids can imagine a character and transform in the blink of an eye. It's so simple for kids, so complex for ad...
I don't see my old films, but I think of the characters I played as friends, like the women I meet in my life who made strong impressions on me. I remember them and they are part of me.
When we think of the ideal, we do not add virtue to virtue, but think of Jesus Christ, so that the standard of human life is no longer a code, but a character.
To me, obstacles in life build character. You have to be able to overcome adversity in order to succeed and appreciate the simple things life has to offer... that's where most of my inspiration for writing and singing comes from.
As you get older and ease your way into being a character actor you have to be comfortable with where you are in life and career, and I'm very comfortable with what I'm doing - working on projects I'm proud of.
Every life of a character is within a context. If I write detached from a social and political background, my story looks like a soap opera where everybody is indoors, not working and living off their emotions.
Our life is a book that writes itself and whose principal themes sometimes escape us. We are like characters in a novel who do not always understand what the author wants of them.
There's something about the alchemy of the show - the actors, the writers, the directors, the editors - that makes 'Parenthood' unique. You get so deeply embedded with these characters because you go through life with them, and that's our priority.
The first thing I do when I read a part is see if I can identify emotionally with a character. If I make that connection, everything else is just working on knowing their life circumstances and manifesting those through practice and research.
When I'm writing a novel, I'm dealing with a double life. I live in the present at the same time that I live in the past with my characters. It is this that makes a novelist so eccentric and unpleasant.
