John Sayles Quotes

It's important for me as an actor to know the entire script before you start shooting, and especially if you're directing, you don't want to be struggling with anything.

Actors always direct themselves. A good actor shows up onset ready, especially in television, and you've done your homework and you know your character. The director may have some variation on what you're thinking or they may have a different interpretation of the scene. So you come prepared to shoot and you've given yourself notes. In television, it may be the first time you're meeting this director and you've been living in this character's skin for a couple of years. It's always great to have fresh perspective and fresh insight, but no one knows your character better than you do.

That's where everything starts, as an actor: you've gotta have great writing and great character development, and then you have really great materials to work from.

Character is plot, plot is character.

For me, the walk of the character is always the first part that I must define for myself.

It's dialogue that gives your cast their voices, and is crucial in defining their characters.

The only characters I ever don't like are ones that leave no impression on me. And I don't write characters that leave no impression on me.

In terms of how I work with actors, having worked so heavily on the script I have a very clear idea of the characters; they are reasonably well illustrated in the script. If you cast it right, to a great degree you can hand it over to the actor and I just make suggestions. I'm not the kind of director who needs or wants to get into too much finessing. Ideally, when you hit the set, you have this conversation, like, 'eh, what did you think?' 'I don't know, what did you think?' 'Why don't we just try it again, make a few physical changes.'

I'm pulling out different aspects of my personality in writing each character and, if I'm doing my job well, I'm being true to the situation and true to the character.

The character of Brent Spiner. We certainly collaborate on the concept of that, but he basically writes the script, then it's sort of a combination of his voice and my voice.

In a sense, all actors are character actors, because we're all playing different characters. But a lot of the time - and I don't know, because I'm not a writer - but writers a lot of times write second- and third-tier characters better than they write primary characters. I guess they're more fun.

I find it much easier to write comic-books than lyrics actually because it's a natural dialogue. Writing song lyrics is not natural but over the years I know what I need to know to get it done. I find it quite easy to capture a character and use my own personality and humour.

It's fun to act, but for me, it's more fun to actually create the character and act it out knowing that I know everything about this character. That's more fun to me than just reading lines.

I think the writing and the casting and all of that has so much to do with actors becoming their characters. I think if an actor is right for a role, casting sees that and the words that are on the page, depending on how it's written, can really help your character develop.

Dialogue is the ideal means of showing what is between the characters. It crystallizes relationships. It should, ideally, be so effective as to make analysis or explanation of the relationships between the characters unnecessary.

When I'm writing novels, even screenplays, it's never an actor I have in mind; it's always the version in my head of who the character is. Once somebody gets cast, I have to adjust a little bit to who they are.

It was only when I started making short films in college and I was looking for girls to play the me-ish parts that I thought, Well, maybe I'm just going to try doing this myself before somebody else comes in and handles it. For a long time my acting was just a marriage of convenience between me and these characters that I was writing.

I write about relationships and I try to create real-life characters.

You do not characterize by telling the reader about the character. You do it by showing the character thinking, speaking and acting in a characteristic way. You simply show it and shut up.

I really become the characters when I'm writing them. I'll become one or two of them more than others, I'm consistent that way.

When I'm writing, I try to have the mask of my character on as I'm walking through the world. When I'm not at my desk, the rest of the time, I try to stay in that character and see the world the way that character would It's almost like method acting in a way — keeping the character close the way the actor keeps a script close and always tries to be in character.

I like to have a much greater base and know a lot more about my character before I begin to fill the person. So a lot of it really entails sit-downs with them, determining who she is, where she came from, and why she reacts a certain way, and then I was really able to expand upon a lot of that and create a lot of that story on my own.

I just thinks it's interesting what it takes an actor to find their characters through the wardrobe, or the hair, or the way a character walks.

I'm an actor, and, beyond that, the thing I do most compulsively is writing. So I come at it very much from this sense of character. I get interested in people. And I feel confident in my capacity to absorb and manifest the characteristics of people. I have a real auditory hang-up for dialogue; re-creating the way people talk really is an addiction in my brain.

I'd like to think that what my style of writing is, is an attempt not so much to judge the characters that I'm writing about, to expose them, to label them, to stereotype them, but instead to make them come alive for the reader with all their strengths and their flaws intact.