Fede Alvarez Quotes

As an actor, you never really set out to be a stand-out character. You just want to do justice to the story and enjoy playing it, and find all the different nooks and crannies of who someone is. For each part that you get, they're all special and you just try to give everything you can to each one. I don't know whether they're going to be stand out in that way or not factors into my work. They all stand out for me.

If you cared enough about your characters, what happened to them was interesting... it's important to care about them, about who they are and what they do...I don't really care whose side they are on, and they can be monstrous on the outside or, worse, on the inside, but you still have to want to spend time with them.

I don't try to intellectualize characters too much. But I always think of the audience. I always make sure that my characters are likeable.

My feeling has always been if you entertain people, they give you permission to do more on a thematic or character level.

If a character dies, you should feel that. If a character accomplishes something, you should feel that. That's where you try to find that balance. It's impossible to articulate, as you go through it. You just have to recognize it.

Until a character becomes a personality it cannot be believed. Without personality, the character may do funny or interesting things, but unless people are able to identify themselves with the character, its actions will seem unreal. And without personality, a story cannot ring true to the audience.

It's really hard to make a good film; it's really, really hard. So, the director's very important, and a character that can be described with more than one or two adjectives, maybe with contradictions. Contradictions are always good because that's truthful.

I don't think I've seen that sort of character in a long time in this genre because again, there was a time when you could have quirky, strange characters that you grew to love, you didn't quite understand, you know, and then all of a sudden they became almost cardboard cutouts for awhile. You kind of know the guy, what his deal is - this guy's hard to figure out. He has some strange habits, but, you learn to love him and you discover more about him, where it comes from.

I cry at the end of every episode of "Girls." I'm just so overwhelmed by the truthfulness with which [Lena Dunham] conveys human nature.

I guess I've just gotten to the point where I don't want to be bored by the characters that I play, and I don't want to feel like I'm having to make something more interesting or I'm having to force something that's not really there on the page.

If you're going to play strength, you've got to marry that with a vulnerability and give your character some relatable qualities.

You can't tell an audience to like a character. And I think the best way to get the audience on someone's side is to embarrass them.

I suppose that the sympathetic/unsympathetic debate about characters sometimes feels to me like a misstatement of purpose. I always think of truly complex characters are falling between the cracks in that debate.

When you have a set of characters, you have to fall in love with them and care about them as each individual character.

Theresa Rebeck's writing is so scarily funny. I just love how unapologetic she is with her writing: she doesn't try to make her characters likeable or heroic, she just really makes them human. Hopefully, the audience is able to love them in the end - or have whatever feelings that they want to have about all of them - but I love that she doesn't have that agenda. That is something that, as an actress, was really appealing to me; to just get to be in this group of people who are complicated and very human.

You're trying to bring a character to an audience, and tell stories. That's what we're all trying do.

You try to make characters you care about, and I think realism helps. Even though this is a high concept, the characters have got to be real.

When complicated characters aren't well drawn, they're boring.

I never want to play a character that's one-dimensional.

What I try to do in writing any character is to put myself in his position.

I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.

When I find material that gives me a natural yet unique character point of view and has well - developed characters throughout the script, it makes the hairs on my arm stand up.

When I was young I used to sit in the cinema thinking wouldn't it be great if you could have a film in which the characters were like real people instead of being like actors.

That's what makes characters interesting. If Sherlock [Holmes] had started out being a straightforward man, we wouldn't be talking about him now. If he became one, that would be interesting. But you have to give him somewhere to go, as [Conan] Doyle did.

I like the fact that a modern television and modern drama on cable has characters that are really intricate and deep and have multiple layers.