Raphael Bob-Waksberg Quotes

I do think that people get really emotionally involved in the TV shows that they love and I think that is fantastic. Of course they are going to have opinions. The other thing is that people project onto their television shows. They see a character and layer on many traits that are actually their own or their idea of what that character is.

At the end of the day, if you don't identify with the main characters, no television show will work.

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.

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.

In my acting, I have tried to do this - to present to audiences a living creature in whom they can recognise themselves or someone they know.

There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature to bestow on external objects the same emotions which it observes in itself, and to find every where those ideas which are most present to it.

Your job as an actor, I guess, is just to make people relate to the character.

When I saw 'subUrbia' on stage, I started having those feelings inside me. I saw it as a film, and I felt I knew the characters, or I was the characters. It really dredged up all this stuff in me that never went away.

Even the older generation are able to understand things when they see it on TV and identify with it. A lot of people are able to empathise with the characters. They can also distinguish between good and bad.

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.

In a strange way, we go to a play to be entertained, but if there is any kind of identification, we either reaffirm our beliefs, or we change.

If you care about [the characters] as if they were real, that always helps.

I feel that my characters all have some part of my character. I feel that they're all me in some way, certainly not in individuality, but they all bear elements of what I feel.

Comedy always works better when you're tracking the story and you care about the characters. That's why there's a lot of movies where there's not a ton of jokes, but you get huge laughs because there's a moment of relief.

Television series always have a lot of characters because you want people to identify with someone on the show, who will be your eyes.

Until a character becomes a personality it cannot be believed. Without personality, the character may do funny or interesting things, but unless people are able to identify themselves with the character, its actions will seem unreal. And without personality, a story cannot ring true to the audience.

I always want the audience to identify with my character in some way. I mean, sometimes you'll get characters that aren't very identifiable. Sometimes you can't relate to your character at all.

I'm sure there's pieces of me in all the characters I play.

The audience doesn't come to see you, they come to see themselves.

Anyone could identify with the human aspect of the characters.

I had never experienced anything like the response I got from people for Pirates of the Caribbean, where you meet a 75-year-old woman who had seen Pirates and somehow related to the character, and then five minutes later you meet a six-year-old who says, 'Oh, you're Captain Jack!' What a rush. What a gift. That was the challenge with Wonka, too--to be, in a sense, like Bugs Bunny. I find it magical that a three-year-old can be mesmerized by Bugs, but so can a 40-year-old or an 80-year-old. It's a great challenge to see if you can appeal to that huge an age range.

I don't know. I always love to find where a character's heart is, and by that I mean where they're intrinsically vulnerable, and to bring that out in myself.

Embrace reality. Think about what delights you - the small luxuries on which you depend, the people whom you cherish most. But remember that they have their own distinct character, which is quite a separate matter from how we happen to regard them.

I'm often moved by the circumstances around some of my characters, but I don't think I've actually cried watching myself.

When you have discovered a stain in yourself, you eagerly seek for and gladly find stains in others.