It's fun to get away from myself for a while when I take on these roles that have very different personalities from my own. I get to say things I normally wouldn't say or act in ways I normally wouldn't act. After all, such roles are more challenging...
I've got a particular way of writing novels, and that carries over into the way I write comics and games, too. I'm a news journalist by background, so I approach everything as reporting - I treat it as real, I ask the questions I'd ask in a real situ...
I give myself homework when I have an audition. I give myself goals, and that's how I check how I'm doing. It can be something simple like 'listen,' or 'find your feet.' And then afterward it's an assessment, so in a way it's not about booking the jo...
An elegantly crafted novel, "The Reluctant First Lady" clearly documents author Venita Ellick as an exceptionally accomplished writer able to skillfully weave memorable characters into a riveting story line from beginning to end. As engaging as it is...
I mean simply to say that I want my characters to suggest the background in themselves, even when it is not visible. I want them to be so powerfully realized that we cannot imagine them apart from their physical and social context even when we see th...
I pick my actors primarily based on my gut-feel. They could be rank newcomers or established stars, but if I feel they'll do justice to my characters, they are on. I think Bollywood is now looking towards Kollywood for new faces, and, to my mind, Sur...
Since I've worked in film and television for so long, I've acquired the ability to let the version of the characters that lives in my mind make way for the living, breathing humans who are going to play them on screen. If you cast it right - and cast...
I think I've always been drawn to the second person. When I was growing up and playing with my friends, the usual way we interacted with imaginary worlds was as characters: a bench was 'your' boat, leaves on a lawn were the fins of sharks out to get ...
On the one hand, I'm so relieved that I've actually managed to finish my very first series and that I've been able to see my characters through to the end of their journeys. On the other hand, I feel like how parents must feel when they send their ki...
I always go back to how people behave. If you watch how people actually behave in a situation, it's very simple and honest and contained. You don't need to use as much expression, as much feeling. Some characters will boil over, and that's another th...
I've been doing this 17 years but I can tell you I have more websites now than I have ever had devoted to me or my past career or my character. When I got this show, I think I had two fans out there that had created websites on my behalf.
On the last drafts, I focus on the words themselves, including the rub of vowels and consonants, stressed and unstressed syllables. Yet even at this stage I'm often surprised. A different ending or a new character shows up and I'm back to where I beg...
Whether it's a kid in high school who doesn't have any friends and finds friends in my characters, or a guy in Afghanistan, who's trying to forget what he did that day, and trying not to think about what he's gotta do tomorrow... I give them a little...
To write is to reveal oneself. When I write something, fiction or non-fiction, I do not expect you to accept what I write, nor to agree with what I propose. I expect you to spend at least a tenth of a second to think about it - may be not about the c...
I started as a playwright. Any sort of scriptwriting you do helps you hone your story. You have the same demands of creating a plot, developing relatable characters and keeping your audience invested in your story. My books are basically structured l...
...when we condescend, when we act consistently with a sense of the character of people in general which demeans them, we impoverish them AND ourselves, and preclude our having a part in the creation of the highest wealth, the testimony to the myster...
I kind of found a niche for myself after 'Firefly'. I found something that I enjoyed doing and that I did well, but as far as how I seek out a part, it's always different. It's always something that lights you on fire when you read it. It might be ju...
I'm the opposite of someone like David Grossman, who knows how his characters walk, and how they smell. I don't allow myself to imagine what mine look like at all. My sense of them comes from the inside. They remain, by necessity, physically vague in...
What would it be like to think what a gerbil thinks, from a gerbil's point of view? Kind of like Thomas Nigel's 1974 paper, 'What Is It Like to Be a Bat?' There's a subjective character of experience that's never captured in reductive accounts. Know ...
I was the singing voice of a cartoon character. I did dog food commercials. I did a lot of commercials, actually, and helped pay my rent and my classes. Then I'd get one good line or two good scenes. I was building my career and building my own exper...
Part of what my work has always been about is to show that the apocalyptic character of the gospel makes the everyday possible. It gives us the time that lets us care for one another as we are ill, helps us care for one another as we experience broke...
