It's more difficult playing a real-life person than a fictional character - you can go easy on yourself with a fictional character.
When you have satire, it has to be real. No matter how outrageous the comedy becomes, you have to believe in the characters.
I've been a character actress right from the beginning. I was no more like 'Cinderella' in my real life than I was like the neurotic poet in 'Cop.'
In real life, every person is the leading man or woman. We don't think of ourselves as supporting or character actors.
Authors may have very good reasons for staying out of character's minds. What is in their mind ought to be out in the world of their action anyway, just as in Real Life. Inside is already out there, and visible. It is also a reader's responsibility t...
All of the trickster, rascal characters that I write have the voice I aspire to. In real life, you can't be that obnoxious and get away with it.
Life is better than any movie or TV show. In real life there is no plot and there are billions of characters.
In order to make characters real - no matter what the character is doing - you have to see yourself as capable of having done that.
My characters are fictional. I get ideas from real people, sometimes, but my characters always exist only in my head.
51st State was one that I loved doing because the character was so out there, and in a way I was sad to leave the character behind. I'm afraid I could never be that cool in real life!
Dictators are ludicrous characters, and, you know, in my career and in my life, I've always enjoyed sort of inhabiting these ludicrous, larger-than-life characters that somehow exist in the real world.
I never base characters on real people. There are people who do that but I really don't know how to do it.
Kids often ask me if characters are real or made up - and I always tell them, 'I hope they're real but I made them up.'
At the core, I try to write characters who are real people with real insecurities, fears, hopes, and dreams, which is why hopefully readers can identify with them.
Because I killed a guy in real life, and because my character kills a guy onstage, they said I could never do anything this great again. I resented that.
The result is a picture that represents so much of what I want and rarely get from a movie - a couple of hours filled with characters who are as exciting as the people I know in real life.
Whenever I work on a part, I look at the world through the filter of the character and I pick things they might use through my observations of real life.
Characters develop as the book progresses, but any that start to bore me end up in the wastepaper basket. In real life, we may have to put up with tedious people, but not in novels.
Every reader knows about the feeling that characters in books seem more real than real people.
I haven't personally in my real life had many people close to me die, but my characters have, and I've had to live that as though it's real. And it can take a really big emotional toll on someone.
I'm writing about real things. Real people. Real characters. You have to believe what I write about is true or you wouldn't pay any attention at all. Sometimes it's me, or a composite of me and other people. Sometimes it's not me at all.
