Greg Rucka Quotes

Characters don't belong to anyone, not even the person who plays them.

But things such as 'Harry Potter', all I can do is shape my character, seek the director's approval on that, and basically take it from there. Professor Flitwick in 'Harry Potter', I kind of defined how I saw him from reading the book, and luckily that matched up with the director's vision.

I've written original material before, where I've come up with the idea and the characters myself, and that's definitely very different to working with someone else's characters and stories.

I think on 'ER,' my other long-running show, I had some ideas about what's going on. 'Stargate Universe,' they were kind of secretive too a little bit about what they wanted to do, but I kind of liked working this way. I like the surprises, and I like knowing just enough to work on the character.

Christopher Guest, he'll call and say, 'We're doing this movie, and I'd like you to play _' and he gives you the character, then I always like to enlarge on the character.

I think modeling is interesting, it's obviously nice to take on a character and go through the process. I'm very lucky that I've been able to do that but I think the challenges that come with the responsibility of art directing something is something that appeals to me. I've done it before in collaboration with other people but it's the first time someone's literally handed it over and been like, "What do you want?" It was really fun to kind of dream up a concept and then execute it with all my friends.

I try to offer as much as I can to the director so he has as much to work with as possible to create the character that, really, he wants to create in a sense.

It's challenging playing grey characters because there's no right way and you get to make your own rules.

When they first asked me to do 'Hulk,' my first instinct was to say no because I didn't think I had anything to say with the character, especially when they said, 'Please do what you did with 'Daredevil,' whatever that was.'

I would love to just continue playing characters that break the mold. I like making interesting decisions when playing characters, so, taking something that would seem one way and then playing it a different way.

I've always liked playing with somebody else and collaborating, just to get out of my own head all the time. Everybody does, but artists especially, we torture ourselves. So it's good for me to immerse myself in somebody else's work.

I want to work with directors who can tell intimate stories in a way that feels universal and with a big enough scope and depth to travel outside of Iceland.

I like working with directors I respect, who give me freedom but also give me a good base from which to work.

I got a call from a mutual friend of ours, Charles King, who's also the executive producer. [Steven Caple Jr and I] had a conversation about it. I read it. We kind of finished each other's sentences when it came to the nuances and personality flaws that the character had, and some stereotypes and things we were trying to stay away from. We agreed on that as well. He just kind of allowed me to run rampant with the ideas. As we paced ourselves through, we developed Turquoise.

The movies I did before were movies with a lot of characters, a lot of locations, and low budgets, which meant that I was running all over the place and never had the chance to build a relationship with an actor. I was always having big, strong relationships with the cinematographers or editors or production designers, but not with the actors.

Once you land on who you think the character is and what his conflicts are, you have to let that lead you. You have to throw all that other stuff away and not be worried about this epic responsibility, or it will just crush and paralyze you.

We in Illumination Entertainment tend not to put ideas through a brand funnel. We've collected a group of people who share a certain taste, and that is connected to our aspirations for our brand. We pride ourselves on making character-centric movies. If I had to say what's the most important thing this company does, it's creating characters that stay with the audience long after they leave the theater.

Oliver Stone will never be happy with the first take. He wants more than that. When you’re delivering your lines, he’ll stop you and tell you some kind of riddle about the character and you have to go away and figure that out. If you’re hoping for him to give you all the answers, then you’re in for a long day.

If you know what it is before you even start, it's not as interesting. Central to being an actor is pretending, and the adventure of it all. That's why you become a junkie for different kinds of situations. I try to attach myself to people who really inspire me, and directors who are really passionate. That way, I can give myself more fully and trust the impulse behind why the film is being made, and I can be a little more irresponsible in finding out what the character is. I have to worry less about what the character means if I trust the director.

I'm the type of actor that believes the director has to be in charge. I've been on sets where the actor's ego was the most important thing, and with a director that messes it up. But I don't like a dictator, I want it to be collaborative - the best idea wins. If I feel respected, and I'm going to give that back. If a director wants to try something, cool, I'll give it back. I also feel like they cast me for a reason, so I'm going to make my mark on it... let me do my thing.

I do believe that characters in novels belong to their writers and their readers pretty equally. I've learned a lot of things about the characters I write from people who read about them. Readers expand them in ways I don't think of and take them to places I can't go.

Alec Baldwin made us all feel like [we could] pal around with him and come up with the best scenarios or scenarios if you're a f - king asshole. So working with him was Alec Baldwin does it the best.

Most of the time I've worked with directors who write their own scripts. The story is more important to me than the part. The project of the film has always been more important to me.

What I really like is the marriage of both [writing and acting] - for instance, with Postcards. I don't actually act in it, but I worked on it with Mike [Nichols] as I went along, creating the character, so it was a bit like acting for me.

I think every time you take on a new role, you're trying to help find that voice and you add your own bits and pieces along the way but with Noah [Baumbach] it's already done.