Joshua Leonard Quotes

I really care more about the human drama than I do the thriller stuff.

I am most attracted to characters and stories that I can relate to. The traditional formula of 'larger than life' I never found attractive.

And that's what people want to see when they go to the theater. I believe at the end of the day, they want to see themselves - parts of their lives they can recognize. And I feel if I can achieve that, it's pretty spectacular.

When you have a chance to play a character people can relate to, it's rewarding.

I don't like the idea the viewer can kind of sit there and go, 'Make me like this person.' People aren't inherently sympathetic.

I think when see you a character on the screen who is actually being touched by the world, and the stuff is actually landing on him, it makes you empathize.

I think my job is hopefully to connect with people emotionally and to feel less alone or understand things in a certain way.

I have a lot of real life experience that I can draw on. And I think that shows in the characters that I play because I'm always trying to find somebody - or find characters to play that I can identify with on a personal level or relate to. And I think it makes for a little bit more of an honest portrayal.

I try, and I think I succeed, in making my readers feel pity for my psychopaths, because I do.

I love stories about people that, whatever situation they're in, you can relate to them in a way.

I think I am more attracted to characters with a subtext, whatever that is and they don't necessarily have to be virtuous, but they have to at least be human.

If you can write a character who is attractive but morally reprehensible, then you've got a character. It's got to feel like people I know and it doesn't just become a bag of tricks.

I always felt there was a kind of humanistic impulse in my thinking about film as well as a real interest in its formal and aesthetic properties - just this idea that it can bring you into a very intimate encounter with people.

When you are playing someone who is dealing with issues on a really personal level, if you don't bring your own issues into the equation, it's not going to feel really personal to the people watching it.

The real trick to these movies and making the big action sequences work - and I've forgotten this sometimes and screwed it up - the characters really have to be humanized. Because you can have the greatest special effects in the world, but if you don't care about the people in those effects, there's no impact.

I just think that good stories are stories that reflect ourselves back at us and each other.

I think, ultimately, if you create characters that people like and can relate to, your characters are grounded on a human level even if your cars are not.

There's a little bit of me in everybody that I play.

I just always want to play people. I don't want it to be necessarily that you relate to the character as female or male, but that you relate to them as a person. That's the driving force.

I'm focused on finding characters I connect to.

When I read, I don't need a character to look like me, act like me, or think like me. I don't need to have my heart broken. I don't need to be surprised or amused or challenged, and I don't need to swoon.

I don't want to say it's nice to see people cry, because of course it isn't, but there's something really emotional and lovely about seeing the impact you're having on someone's life.

Every great movie is about the people, even if it's a great popular success like 'Gone With the Wind.' It's really not about the Civil War. It's about Scarlett and Rhett. That's who you go to see. You're not going to root for the North or pull for the South, or, you know, it's the people you remember.

I'm very drawn to the human condition and the emotional aspects of stories. It's what's not on the page that I get excited about.

As readers, we want not only a strong story, but also characters we can relate to, characters that feel real. We have to find something of ourselves in them. Each character, even those only there to serve the mechanics of the plot, should have a number of layers. The entire world you are stepping into as a reader must feel real. It must have resonance, you must be able to touch the light; smell the smells.