Kalki Koechlin Quotes

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.

Writing can give full meaning to characters and avoid pure stereotype.

The instant that movies became described as character driven was the instant when characters stopped mattering in movies. In other words, the birth of the notion of the character-driven movie coincided with the birth of movies in which characters were incidental to the very activities in which they engaged.

My first job is to write the characters as full and authentic people as well as I can.

It's hard to know whether certain characters come to life or not, they either come to have their own life or they don't. I've written many things in which the characters just remain inert.

I remember my dad working with me on breaking down my script and writing out a back story for my character and all that stuff.

I treat all my characters as if they were real, and I am scrupulous about the details of their lives.

I do not choose characters because I think, 'Wow, that woman is so strong.' I chose these characters with utmost conviction because I think they were realistic enough to exist, and I really liked the scripts.

I don't like having characters as props. I never want a character to be a prop.

I try to get roles that challenge me in what I can do and who I think I can portray. For me, it's about creating characters with really fascinating stories, because that's what I like to watch on TV.

'Push' had a story, 'The Paperboy' story you could just throw up in the air and shoot holes through the book because the story wasn't as strong. But I felt the characters were stronger in 'The Paperboy'; they were vivid.

I've dropped myself into straightforward character pieces in order to explore that form and reap its values. But you are sort of restricted visually when your first requirement is to tell a fairly straightforward story.

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.

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.

So I work hard to present the human side of my characters while not neglecting the plot.

Normally you read a screenplay - and I read a lot of them - and the characters don't feel like people. They feel like plot devices or cliches or stereotypes.

I love to evoke the bones and meat and thoughts of characters.

My stories are pretty simplistic, but the characters are always complex and always right, and that comes from the script and my research and reverse-engineering what I find in the real world.

The question of likability is a bit of a puzzler for me. You know, I don't write people with likability in mind. It's more whether or not I find them compelling.

You can't afford for there to be gaps in your pool of knowledge when it comes to a character; otherwise, what ends up onscreen is generalized and unspecific.

I really enjoy playing intelligent characters. I'm more interested in that than just emotional kind of Mum characters.

Being an actor, I have no issues with a character being negative or positive as long as the role is substantial and meaty.

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.

It's always incredible though when you feel like the writer knows the character intimately and can see their life sprawling away outside of the show.

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