John Slattery Quotes

A lot of times, scripts are written so the character is all one way. Even with 'Bringing Out the Dead,' the character was written a little more generic.

I am fine playing 'Law & Order' and even the 'Jurassic' movies to be straight up, as far as the characters being portrayed there, but I never want to stay in straight-up land too long. I always wanted to do something where the character's world gets to be explored.

It's nice to create a character, not just within two scenes, but within the journey of a whole movie. It's fun to do that.

The world is full of novels in which characters simply say and do. There are certainly legitimate genres in which this is sufficient. But in real and lasting writing the character is.

There's no particular role that comes to mind that I'd like to take on, but for me, it's about playing interesting characters and not just two-dimensional ones.

If there's ever going to be a challenge for an actor, it's that character who's often evolving - which is not often the case in television.

Every actor wants to have a character that changes, that has some kind of movement, that gets from point A to point B, that doesn't just supply one note.

The most I could hope for is to come and try and develop a character who is interesting, who is interesting to me, who is interesting to fans and who could contribute to the storytelling that is 'Law & Order: SVU.'

The life of a character doesn't just exist between action and cut.

I think often times on Joss Whedon's shows he can make you hate a character for a period and then love the character. He does it effortlessly.

There are so few shows that are willing to take risks with their characters in the way that 'Homeland' does. And yet, the audience still comes back and loves those characters.

I had been thinking for a while about how bored and tired I was of playing straight-down-the-middle everymanish characters that have what I call white guy problems. And I missed playing characters who lacked dignity and more importantly, lacked social skills.

You know, we have to take these characters - who, granted, have their separate personalities but, on a lot of levels, are pretty two-dimensional - and make them into people with flaws, with insecurities.

Most of my films have a lot of character development and exploration, whereas in most horror movies the characters are just cardboard.

To me, the struggle is to try to make a less-well-written or less-well-rounded character and find who they are. If you really get it, and it's all on the page, then it's really just gonna pop out at you.

There is more meat and mileage in complex characters, like 'Running with Scissors.'

For me, it's first about the characters. I look for a character who is intriguing and challenging and different from what I've done before.

These people I play are not usually wish-fulfillment characters.

I believe the audience likes to see well-defined characters on screen than just larger-than-life heroes.

I build my characters from the day they're born to the first page of the script.

I think all interesting characters have some kind of a complex.

There is nothing like being able to develop a three-dimensional character over a long period of time. Sometimes you aren't able to fully portray a character because you only have a couple of scenes to do it in, and you don't get the full life and background of that character.

Specifically, we talked about making the character of the prince not so charming, at least in the beginning, and I'm playing around with the preconceptions attached to a character. That's really what intrigued me as well because I thought it would be fun to do it.

I think books with weak or translucent plots can survive if the character being drawn along the path is rich, interesting and multi-faceted. The opposite is not true.

But I guess I like playing flawed guys 'cause it gives a place for the characters to go.