Vincent D'Onofrio Quotes

I just love to be able to actually build a character.

One of my favorite experiences in my career, certainly one of the most interesting characters I've ever played, was Simon Lee on 'The Event.' That was a show I was quite proud of and a character I really enjoyed playing. It was one of the most three-dimensional characters that was ever written for me and that I'd ever gotten to play.

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 don't really write with actors in mind; I write with characters and then hope desperately that we can get good actors to play those parts.

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.

It's all about story and character with me, and I don't care if the job is on daytime or prime time or the web. Hey, give me a good character and someone to listen, and I'll do my acting on a street corner.

As a writer, all you want to do is write for great actors. That's all.

I'd love to star in a television series of my own. I love the idea of living with a character for a number of years, watching him grow.

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.

One of the things I really love about TV is this symbiotic relationship you can get between the writers and the actors, and the characters start to come to life because you start to collaborate.

In my first film, Five Corners, I played a very scary, violent crazed character, and it exposed me to a lot of directors.

Acting is contained - you act for three months, then leave it - but writing is the act of creation. Writing is dangerous.

If you have a very good concept of your character, you can snap into it.

The beauty of performance for me is finding details with which to betray character.

If I'm going to do television, I wanted that 'North and South' experience. I wanted something that's going to challenge me on a constant basis.

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.

If you have a great script and great dialogue, you don't need to improvise.

You try, as an actor, to wear a mask; you're serving a story.

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.

The challenge is to stay true to the characters while also having them be entertaining every day, because it turns out that just watching someone be true to themselves isn't that rad to watch.

I really wanted to create some of my own characters, then it became wanting to act the parts, then it sort of grew from there because I really enjoyed doing it.

I write in character a lot.

Even though the 'Shooter' character on TV is so close to the real-life me, I'm still playing with ways to creatively portray that character.

When I do a film, it is about how I become a character.

I used to say I wasn't interested in writing about characters.