Dee Rees Quotes

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

In a series, you really need to stay open-minded. It's not like a play or a film, where you can create and fully commit to your character's back-story.

The world is full of novels in which characters simply say and do. There are certainly legitimate genres in which this is sufficient. But in real and lasting writing the character is.

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

The most I could hope for is to come and try and develop a character who is interesting, who is interesting to me, who is interesting to fans and who could contribute to the storytelling that is 'Law & Order: SVU.'

Also, in my acting, I feel very much like a storyteller, exploring the flaws of the characters that I interpret. I look for the imperfections, and I love a character that is just so flawed.

I do build my own backstory as an actor. It's important to know where your characters have come from in order to know where they're going - in order to exist in that state of being.

The Greeks already understood that there was more interest in portraying an unusual character than a usual character - that is the purpose of films and theatre.

When you get into a film, it is one story and one set development of a character, and you are able to delve into one character for a short period of time and discover everything about them.

I am good when there is something central about the character. There is always a human theme I attach myself to. I am really looking for something that is moving or enlightening or something with depth as an actor. I look for these kinds of roles.

Often the starting point for characters, for me, is finding a little, most minor detail, and I'll go from there.

There is more meat and mileage in complex characters, like 'Running with Scissors.'

When I'm breaking in a character like Jessica Jones, I have this amazing opportunity to create her backstory. It's all of the work that happens before I'm ever on camera... Writing 'Bonfire' was like doing all of that fun stuff; it was like 300 pages of prep work.

When you create a character, you create it for yourself - you do whatever you want. It's your job to explore it in as many different avenues as you can in order to make it a fully wounded character.

We have a writing process that's very much you try to create the character in a complicated way and then you let the story lead you to discovering who the character is in a natural way.

I honestly feel it is important for a director to get obsessed with the characters.

I think it's always good not to listen to what the rules are supposed to be about the arc of the character and the third acts and all this stuff.

We try to not write stories based on reaction. We try to write them based on character integrity as we understand it and observe it.

There are certain things that I know I don't want to do anymore. Playing out-and-out terrorists who terrorise people and don't actually move the conversation on are not worth doing. So that's probably another reason I don't go back to America, because a lot of it is like that. It's boring, dull, very lazy writing.

There is nothing like being able to develop a three-dimensional character over a long period of time. Sometimes you aren't able to fully portray a character because you only have a couple of scenes to do it in, and you don't get the full life and background of that character.

I take little bits and pieces of ideas that I may or may not believe in but I give them to this character and he runs with them. I have fun with however he handles the situation.

From a writer's standpoint, each character and story presents its own unique challenges and delights. I'm deeply curious about all of my characters, and I love peeling away their layers to see what's underneath their skin, or secreted deep within their hearts.

I think books with weak or translucent plots can survive if the character being drawn along the path is rich, interesting and multi-faceted. The opposite is not true.

It's nice to create a character, not just within two scenes, but within the journey of a whole movie. It's fun to do that.