Tom Selleck Quotes

With 'Girls,' Marnie was a slow burn; she shifted over time. With 'Get Out,' I was suddenly faced with the pressure that, like, I need an audience to know Rose deeply within 15 minutes, within a couple scenes. And that's not something I've ever done before.

As an actor, it's great to play a strong leader with a heart of gold.

When you can have a character that the audience likes from the beginning, but then you put them in a situation where they grow - I think that gives it a lot of heart.

If you have great characters, then your reader becomes emotionally invested in those people.

When I watch a movie, someone's beauty isn't what engages me: it's what's going on internally. And I imagine it's what the audience thinks, too.

One of the things an actor tries to access is immediacy, so that you feel like you're experiencing it for the first time. But when you're playing a character who knows what's going to happen and can't stop himself to reacting although he knows he can't stop himself from reacting, there's a whole separate set of things to consider.

I don't think the challenge is asking an audience to like a character; it's inviting them to try and understand them... then making that journey entertaining and worth their while. It's a classic trick, but it's human, and it allows characters to have more depth.

One must never assume that a character is sympathetic because of either the actor playing them or the fact that they're a lead. I think that's a recipe for failure, actually, because if they become unsympathetic, you lose your audience.

The work evolves when you get another part, and then you're getting called on to solve difficult characters, to inject a note of humanity into them. It's more interesting for me to do that than to stand around and be sunny.

I enjoy pushing my characters to the limit. No matter how far out there I go, I look for things that make the characters human.

There is always pressure playing a real living person and even pressure developing a character from scratch.

I'm drawn particularly to stories that evolve out of the character of the protagonist.

Supporting characters add depth to a story, and great actors leave their imprint with the audience.

I was incredibly intimidated playing Lincoln Lee in the alternate universe, which was the first role I played on 'Fringe' because I was actually the head of a Fringe division and the head of a unit that was going out and I had to lead entire SWAT teams of people. I really questioned in myself, 'Can I carry that responsibility?'

If you can't laugh at your own characters, or shed a tear for them, or even get angry at one of them, no one else will either.

You know, the point of a novel - or to me, the point of a novel, the gift of a novel is to go really deeply inside people's lives and inside their personal experiences.

But I also wanted to give them an intelligent emotional journey, without having to suspend reality - to be able to look at those characters and see reasons for the relationships and why what happens happens.

I don't think people are ever going to a place where they're like, 'I'm over stories about character and love.'

You'd be surprised how hard it is getting the human emotional arc in a script to work. Ultimately a director stands and falls by their ability to do that.

The audience has to understand that if the film is going to have any meaning for them. If they are going to empathize with the characters, they have to visualize the process of concentration involved in making every move.

I can tell you that as a writer and as a reader, I regard character as king. Or queen. No matter how riveting the action or interesting the plot twists, if I don't feel like I'm meeting someone who feels real, I'm not going to be compelled to read further.

As an actor, you don't want to know the beginning and end to your character's arc. It makes it more fun. You're not playing the end. You're playing it realistically. You don't know where this character is going to go and what's going to happen to him, which just makes it more interesting for the viewers to watch.

One thing George R. R. Martin does is surprising things to main characters. But he says so himself.

Coming from TV and film, rule number one is that you always service the main character first and foremost. If that's not working, you've got nothing.

The interesting thing about my character Sylar is that my strengths as an actor seemed to go completely against the shape of a character in the shadow.