Harold Pinter Quotes

I'm more interested in character than events. I've observed that about myself as a writer. I find events, even the most dramatic sort, not to be such fertile ground.

You're trying to bring an emotional and psychological reality to a character that's on the page and make them three-dimensional.

All the characters I've ever played have really had nothing to do with looks. There's a lot of things that are a lot more interesting to me to play than that.

There are a lot of techniques for developing a character.

I do think you need to understand a character's motivation and perspective.

With any role I play, I find out what the human problem is first.

What is extraordinary about the character of Edna - and I speak as though I am completely outside this character and I am talking to you - I'm, as it were, in the wings, and she's on stage, and every now and then she says something extremely funny, and I stand there and think: 'I wish I'd thought of that.'

I still don't understand why the tag of 'action hero' follows me. My films have all these elements - romance, action and comedy. None of the fight sequences of my character is an act of randomness. There's a reason to action in my films.

Whether you're writing a horror show or a James Bond film, I think what bubbles beneath is interesting characterization. The colors that emerge through storytelling is what a dramatist does. There's always got to be something bubbling underneath that will erupt at some point.

Claude Rains was what we call an actor's actor. He was very involved with himself and his performance.

Before I write the first page of a novel, I spend a long time creating detailed backgrounds for my characters. I imagine the experiences that have formed them, what makes them happy, angry, fearful, and what they yearn for.

To play any character, you have to have a total understanding of why they do what they do.

The analysis of character is the highest human entertainment.

My mentor Jon Simmons introduced me to the Stanislavski system, which is so heavy on back-story. So you write and write and write these back stories about a character and then you throw it away. So then on set, if it doesn't come, then you didn't do your work.

Acting is kind of difficult to intellectualize - it's a far more visceral experience. It's really hard to be able to think about and then employ these kind of esoteric notions of this person's backstory and try to weave it in somehow. It's just kind of impossible.

My thing is, I like playing guys who have a really interesting internal monologue.

I look for characters who are emotionally driven.

I think the idea is to try and understand everything about the characters and where the character is coming from, from their point of view, why they say what they do. And not, 'Oh, but I would never say that. Why does the character say that?' But then making it as personal as possible.

I also try very hard to create characters - both heroes and villains - with psychological depth.

The biographical novel sets out to document this truth, for character is plot, character development is action, and character fulfillment is resolution.

When you're crafting a character, it's good to have a lot of influences.

It's exciting that you've got an entire season to experience 24 hours of highly dramatically charged human experience. It allows for the close inspection of minutiae in behaviour.

To give a character life in a short space of time, it helps if you arrive on screen with a past.

A novel makes it possible to understand not just events, but the people who control the events; not only their choices, but also their motives.

You spend so much time developing a character when you do a film; so much of your work is done before you get set to shoot because you've been working on the character: the way he walks, the way he talks, what might upset him, what might make him happy.