Amanda Plummer Quotes

I had the feeling that focusing on objects and telling a story through them would make my protagonists different from those in Western novels - more real, more quintessentially of Istanbul.

I knew what kind of genre 'Casa de mi Padre' was going for. But my character, specifically, I think is very real.

I often have scripts sent to me with allegedly Scottish characters where I end up telling them, 'You're going to have to rethink this whole thing!'

I actually really liked 'The Help.' I know that may not be a popular thing, but I thought it was a solid film. It wasn't 'Roots.' It wasn't 'The Color Purple.' But you couldn't pick it apart in terms of storytelling, and I thought the characters were well written.

If you've got more ambiguous characters or stock stereotypes, the plastic comes through and they don't work as well.

If a writer is true to his characters they will give him his plot. Observations must play second fiddle to integrity.

As in the case of many of the stories that I've written I'm not trying to editorialize. I don't want there to be a message at the end of anything I write. Otherwise you wouldn't trust the characters. They'd feel less organic and more like puppets that are sharing the author's opinion.

I believe in characters that can be tangible, and that you can actually relate to.

Many people are laughing when they see me, but I'm playing Mrs.Baskets all pristine. I'm playing it not-Louie. I'm not being Louie. I'm just being the character that I think it should be. I had to make a decision as to whether I was going to change my voice or not, but we decided for me not to change my voice, and I think that was the best thing ever, because I think it would've made a big difference in the character. I don't think it would've been as good.

Actually, I identify with all my characters, good and bad. I have to do that in order to make them genuine. I have to understand them even if I don't approve of them. Not completely - it's impossible; complete identification is, in fact, not desirable.

But having a really good understanding of history, literature, psychology, sciences - is very, very important to actually being able to make movies.

Get too conceptual, too cute and remote, and your characters die on the page.

Every movie I work with the costume designer to see what feels like the character, not what Columbus would wear but what is right for the character. Outside of the armored truck standard issue security guard uniform, this guy is trying to make ends meet. He might have one pair of jeans, the same boot, maybe changes his shirt but he doesn't have a walk-in closet full of things, so I wanted something comfortable that felt like the character.

Let us have no ranting tragedies. Too many charactersNot a tolerable woman's part in the play.

A character on a page has to feel real, and for me the greatest fun is if you could gender-swap the role.

A character to me can't be contrived. I don't like to contrive characters. They have to have an element of truth.

I do remember when I first read the script of the 92 In The Shade. I was in the house at Nicholas Beach, and that gang was starting to break up, and I read this terribly well-written dialogue, not figuring out that films are about structure and the thing was totally unstructured, and I thought, "Who is this writer? God, he's great."

The art of the novel is to arrive at that artless point where your characters become more real than yourself.

No matter what character your play. I feel like whenever anyone is honest and whole and well-written, you're going to be able to connect to that person because we're all kinda made up of the same stuff and I think that's always one of the really powerful things about approaching each individual character and role and film.

I try to be true to the characters that I've created and sometimes I disagree with them, but their opinions about the story and the characters really matter to me.

I did a film that was similar to that world, which was Brotherly Love, and the audience fell in love with [my character] June. So to be honest, I remembered what I did in that movie and studied that film and my mannerisms while shooting in Philly.

I love sentences. I love characters. But most of all, perhaps, I love to work on plot, and that may be where my natural gifts lie, if I have any. I like to think hard about plots in TV shows and films.

When I was in my 20s and 30s, there was such a variety and diversity of types of films that you could see. So many of them were really more about the human condition and about relationships between people, and they were smaller films that had a much greater impact on me as a human being.

I mean, we should only be talking about the merits of film ["Moonlight"] because one of the great things about the visual language is that it is the great equalizer.

Something that has always attracted me to even taking on the occupation of actor is the idea that I could be lucky enough to portray different characterizations from different places in the world, whether it's speaking another language or taking on a dialect and building a history from where they were born. I was very attracted to that concept, in becoming an actor.