Melanie Lynskey Quotes

I'm interested in telling the character's story, not my beliefs, political or otherwise.

It's hard to hold the focus that strongly on a single character for that long.

Coming from TV and film, rule number one is that you always service the main character first and foremost. If that's not working, you've got nothing.

As a character actor, you have to understand that it's not about you. You have to remember it's about someone else's life. And your character is just passing through.

I never outline my novels before I write. I do have a vague sense of beginning, middle, and end at the outset of each book, but for me, writing has always been a very character-driven process.

I think the danger in trying to set too many things up or do too much world-building in a movie so soon is you forget to actually make a movie.

It was always about the story rather than the character.

Fans want to see a story with characters, and they want to see a story.

And the nice thing about writing a novel is you take your time, you sit with the character sometimes nine years, you look very deeply at a situation, unlike in real life when we just kind of snap something out.

I only have an awareness of what I'm trying to achieve as an actor and what my job as the character is to service.

The fun thing about doing origin stories is you are introducing the audience to characters.

As an actor, you always want to feel like what you're doing is making a difference to the story.

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.

My job is to help the functioning of the story, not to draw attention to myself, but to make my characters function within the story, to work for the benefit of the story, to make the whole thing work.

In the work that I normally do, you have a whole script, a whole arc, that you play. And I do believe a good actor will play every bit of information they're given.

An author's characters do what he wants them to do.

I would say I have sort of a natural gift for character, and following one person's point of view at a time, and dialogue, but I'm not naturally good at strong plot.

Sympathetic characters usually have a voice. They usually don't have any trouble being heard.

Every single film I've done, it's about the character.

I never try to give a message in my books. It's about living with characters long enough to hear their voices and let them tell me the story. Sometimes I would love to have a happy ending, and it doesn't happen because the character or the story leads me in another direction.

The action genre is not always the most synonymous with character development.

'Longmire' is more of a show about the characters, and you couldn't pay a bigger compliment than to want to know more about my character, or the characters on the show.

The best of all kinds of movies are character-driven, and I definitely don't want to lose sight of why Derek and I started to write movies together in the first place.

I have absolutely no interest in playing the young male lead around which a story happens.

I don't plot my novels - I move along with my characters.