Conrad Hall Quotes

I like my characters to be ones I think about long after I've finished reading the script.

I've always felt, even with sketches, that if you don't care about these people, then it doesn't matter.

My characters are always utterly sympathetic to me, if that makes any sense.

You have to be involved and relate to the characters in order to make a film that is true emotionally.

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 usually don't find myself reacting to my characters. I just create them ... And let the audience decide whether they're empathetic or scared or compelled to cheer me on.

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.

Sympathetic characters usually have a voice. They usually don't have any trouble being heard.

I spend a lot of time with my characters.

I think often times on Joss Whedon's shows he can make you hate a character for a period and then love the character. He does it effortlessly.

If I don't fall in love with my characters, I cannot shoot.

I am a firm believer that a good plot makes for a fun enough read, but it's not what binds us. If we don't care about the characters, we won't care - not in a lasting way - about what's happening to them.

Sometimes I know what my characters are moving away from or toward; more often I just wait and see. For instance, though I knew Sinkler in 'The Trusty' was going for water, I did not know that he would meet a fetching young farm wife until I got him into her front yard.

We seek to craft characters who inspire empathy: characters our audience will care for and, as a result, will care about what happens to them and thus will share the journey we have charted. A story, after all, is the character's journey.

I really fall in love with my characters, even the bad ones. I love getting together with them. They tell me what to do; they take me on a wild and wonderful trip.

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

As an actor, you don't really have a say or a voice in what the conversation of the show is going to be. So, as an actor, I'm just trying to make sense of why the character is making these choices, and somehow, in that way, you can sympathize or root, at least not detest, what this person is doing. That's, at least, my job in telling that story.

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.

My job is to see the world through the character's eyes.

Audiences need to engage with characters.

Filmmaking is a language where you empathise with human situations. Unless you have empathy for characters, you shouldn't be a filmmaker.

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.

When I read a script, the important thing is that I can connect in some way with that character and have some idea from what his story is that I can tell that story too, because that's all acting is, is storytelling.

It can be a fictional character and yet relatable... It always depends on the content of the film and what you are doing.

Rather than just making a movie about video games, I wanted to start with the character and what the character was going through.