Doug Liman Quotes

I love working with actors. I love to see what they're going to do. There's just something very thrilling and satisfying with being involved with something, all the way through the process [making movie].

When you get a character that you're just starting to work on, it's the most exciting and most terrifying feeling because you have endless hours of diving in, researching, reading, and decision-making.

What I do is to collaborate with each actor and work one-on-one to create a character. And that is a matter of huge complexity and is a combination of a great deal of discussion and a lot of practical work. It involves a lot of consideration for the real people out there, and all kinds of sources of real people. The result is the character. But I'm not supposed to talk about what it is we do, because it's nobody's business.

When I'm putting the character together I try to find music that I think fits the character.

My own personal process with movies is to develop the characters with the actors and, when I've done that properly, you can't imagine anyone else, but that actor, playing that part.

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.

I'm not the kind of actor who goes into exhaustive research for each role.

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.

There are two schools of thought: There are those actors who explain to you that they know exactly how they're going to do the part... And then there is the other method, which is to have no method at all. This is mine.

Mike Leigh encourages you to choose a person that you know to base your character on. You write a whole list of people that you know and you go through that list in great depth with him. And then he chooses one of those people from your list.

I do think that's so much a part of what being a director is - in working with actors - to really try and be sensitive to what each actor needs to get to where he wants to be.

For me, when I'm making a movie I like to stay in character throughout the day.

I'm a physical actor in that I start with a physical sketch of the character. I find it easier to find inspiration from the outside in. If I find the character's tensions and the way he carries himself or looks, that's going to affect how I talk. So that's how I start to create that person.

To me that's part of my working day, and I would never refuse a job where I'm under several hours of makeup, because as an actor, I enjoy performing. It's about the creation of the character and the art to me, not about being comfortable and how long it all takes.

Creating characters is just another way to express a type and put that type to use.

When I create a character, I do it with the directors, and I take their notes and try to have my notes meet in a common ground. I don't create characters myself, and I don't really think that's my job. I'm not a prep person at all - plus, I'm just a lazy procrastinator.

You always have to create the character from the ground up.

In every film, whether it's a fictional character or not, you create an idea of the character and for me I always do a bad impersonation to start with.

I love actors. I love working with actors. I really enjoy the process. I love having those in-depth discussions about the interior of their character, and actors really love to discuss that, too. I could talk about that for days with them. They love that, and I love that.

I go through a whole process with the actors first, building and creating characters, then I encourage them to sort of live in that character when they're in the screen.

Some actors can create characters and leave them at 'Cut!', but I work the opposite way and drag them out of me. For me, it's about fixing your fabric to fit the role.

I'm not a method actor, but I'm affected by the life I share my life with during shooting. It's always a very strange and special period for me.

What's fun about doing a series is you get to take some time to create the character.

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.

I find that I kind of have to sink into the character.