People sometimes seem surprised because often, you know, you know, there's a lot of tortured characters in the stuff I write.
I'm not one of these 'the characters write themselves; the story just fell out of me' kind of writers. Wish it was like that.
Hollywood didn't know if I was an actor or a nut or if I was this crazy character I was playing. I had developed an image of being a little bit unusual, different and wild.
There is a misperception, if you will, in critical response or even in Hollywood, that I can only do exaggerated characters. Or what they would call over-the-top performances. Well, this is completely false.
It's usually easier for me to begin writing in a character's voice if that person is different from me in some significant way.
I always find filming stressful. I get very caught up thinking about my character - 'Am I doing it right? Should it be done this way?'
Once I start putting all my little insecurities in my mind, I'm not actually acting. Then it's about me - and it should never be about me. It should be about the character.
What interests me in writing a novel is taking really remote voices, characters, and stories and beginning to create some kind of web.
I think the more the actor lets you know what he thinks of the character, the less the audience cares - like a comedian who laughs at his own jokes.
The thing that I like about the way characters are written on the show these days is that nobody's perfect. Everyone has made a lot of mistakes and bad choices.
All I wanted to do was read, to be told stories. Stories were full of excitement and emotions and characters that entertained and often inspired.
Dysfunctional co-dependent relationships always appeal to me. I don't know exactly how it started. I start writing sketches of characters and little scene-lets, and then it builds.
Will isn't a screaming queen - that's Jack's part. They needed someone to play the part for America. It's just not the same as Britain. To have a gay character as a lead is risky.
In human character, simplicity doesn't exist except among simpletons.
As an actor, particularly because I'm - I would call myself a character actor. I change my look, my physical appearance and my body, my hair color, my whatever all the time for a role.
I saw 'Six Degrees of Separation' because my brother was in it. It was a watershed experience. It was theatrical and scary, and New York functioned like a character. John Guare became a hero for me.
I become my characters, and then try to allow events in the story to take their own course. I try not to play God, but to let them work out their own destiny.
Action films are great, but an action film that has characters that are compelling and a story that people can care about is something even better. We love to see action heroes that are vulnerable, that are sensitive, that are family people, that are...
I like films to be pure cinema, but I also like them to provide a snapshot of a family, a society or a character - something that can nourish you as a human being as well as an actor.
I'll write about myself, or people I know, or archetypal characters, but the goal is to get at some truth, not to necessarily convey my own experience as an individual to the world.
Well, I go to the theater today, and its curtain - there is no curtain in this play; the lights go down and go up - and we start. And I live this character for two hours. There are only two of us in the play. And It's a complete experience.
