Christopher McQuarrie Quotes

It's down to the actors to show the writers the potential of the character.

I'm a director's actor; I'm a storyteller's actor.

I think being an actor makes me a better writer and vice versa. I know the kinds of roles I would kill to play, and I try to create them for others.

The filmmaker's got to make it his story and the actors have got to make it their story.

The characters are the result of two things-first, we elaborate them into fairly well-defined people through their dialogue, then they happen all over again, when the actor interprets them.

I think actors are very obsessed about looking different and behaving differently, but all people need is just a different film. They don't want a different you; they want a different story.

I have only recently got interested in film, and it is a strange way of working in many ways. But actually, when it is at its best, it's quite an extraordinary way of working between a director and an actor, to really explore an inner life.

You have more creative freedom with writing, in certain ways, because you can create everything that happens. But, as an actor you also have creative freedom because you don't so much focus on what has to move the story along, and only on how your character is reacting to situations.

And I have the support of the writers: I have a great relationship with the creative team, and they have a good hold of my character and my personality, and they come up with some great stuff, and I'm forever trying to change it up, keep it fresh.

But things such as 'Harry Potter', all I can do is shape my character, seek the director's approval on that, and basically take it from there. Professor Flitwick in 'Harry Potter', I kind of defined how I saw him from reading the book, and luckily that matched up with the director's vision.

There is no such thing as a Bollywood hero or Hollywood hero. All you see on the screen is the lead actor's interpretation of the role that has been conceived by the writer.

The writer creates the role on the page and then the actor takes it and makes it their own.

If I'm doing my job as an actor, the audience knows everything I know about the character.

When you have a book as material as it is, it's a lot easier to create a character because you have so many resources to draw upon when acting.

You just play what a writer writes, in terms of what a character chooses to do and how a character chooses to deal with their various relationships.

A part of being an actress that is sort of frustrating is that the writers get to tell you about your character.

In my experience, it's usually up to the actor how a character is portrayed.

I think sometimes actors are drawn to good television because you have more time to sell it, you have more time to shape a character, and to tell a story, and that's really appealing.

In every film, whether it's a fictional character or not, you create an idea of the character and for me I always do a bad impersonation to start with.

A lot of actors, whatever movie you're working on, you make up a back story just for your own, to work off, even if the audience doesn't have it revealed to them. I think it's important that the audience makes up their own mind.

When I work, I think mainly in terms of dramatic choices.

With most good scripts and good shows, they expect the actor to bring some of their ideas to the backstory of the character. It's always a good collaboration between the actor and the writer and the director to try stuff out during the process.

The way I write my shows, every character is its own organic thing. No character has a life at all until I see it played by somebody.

For me, being an actress, my responsibility is not to pay attention to all the noise around me and to pay attention to the script and the director and protect the character and try to tell her story the best I can.

Good acting is confused with good dialogue delivery. Acting is about all about performance, and the way we interpret and understand the character that we bring alive onscreen.