Jake Johnson Quotes

When I approach any script, I always try to find what I would relate to most in it.

I believe that if writers want their readers to care about a character, they have to care themselves. I have to root for a detective who screws up as much as Thorne does, who shares my birthday, my North London stomping ground, and my love of country music, both alt and cheesy.

Part of the success of the show is that the audience sees themselves in the characters, becomes the characters. The more they inhabit the characters, the more they see.

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.

Some actors can distance themselves from the parts they play, but I fall into the category who use bits of themselves.

A lot of actors like saying, 'Don't judge a character; you might fall in love with him!' Not me.

The more time you spend with any character, whether it's from a comic book universe or a really naturalistic universe, the more time you spend, the more that character just becomes another aspect of yourself.

Actors do movies because you want to make a connection; you want an audience to recognise themselves in what it is that you're depicting.

For me, the first thing that I respond to - whether it's doing a play or movie or television or anything - is just the character. Is this a guy whose shoes I want to walk in for the next 12 days or six months?

If people don't connect to Eric Carter's struggles, I'm sure they'll find a character in this series to connect to. That's ultimately what it's about for me.

With every character that I've ever played, I felt like I just understood the way that she thought and how she was.

Trying to find a human side to the character is a way to give them a chance to have people like them.

Well, as an actor, at least from my standpoint, I can't not like who I'm playing.

In all my characters, I try to find an iota of myself, and in Castle, I found a lot. He gets away with a lot, so that's fun.

I really connect with every character that I've played, just because I kinda have to; as an actor, you want to take them in and get to know them and like them; because they're evil, you kinda have to like them so that you can understand them and play them and play them with some kind of empathy.

People like the comedy more when they care about the characters.

The first thing, when I read the script, is that I need to care about what happens and feel compelled by the story and engaged by the characters. It needs to resonate with me, even if what the characters are going through is not something that I have experienced in my life. I have to feel like it has some sort of meaning to me.

I always find that I have to be emotionally on my character's side for it to be convincing.

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.

In terms of the characters I think are really fun to play, a lot of times it's someone in my head saying 'I know that woman.'

I think the key divide between the interactive media and the narrative media is the difficulty in opening up an empathic pathway between the gamer and the character, as differentiated from the audience and the characters in a movie or a television show.

A reader should encounter themselves in a novel, I think.

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

I always find stuff in my characters to relate to.

I guess I see a part of myself in everyone I write about. I tend to write about kids who are obsessed with something, and even though I have never been good with machines the way Hugo is, I did love miniature things when I was a kid.