Alice Lowe Quotes

You can't take a character anywhere they don't expect the character to go. But within those confines is where creativity lies.

I love live theater. I get my rocks off by doing stand-up, and I am the only actor. But to show up eight times a week and not have that time for myself; to do someone else's lines? When I work for Wendy Wasserstein or Terrence McNally, Neil Simon or even Shakespeare, I do not have the right to change the lines.

The Swords were still interesting but by then a cast of characters had started to appear and go on from book to book, and other things about the world began to feel constricting. And there were other things I wanted to do, so I closed the series up and stopped it.

I always change my words in everything I do. I make the language fit, because I know the character from the inside out. Often character actors are not in a position to do that, but I do it. I don't change any cue and I never change anybody else's lines, but I make my own words fit my mouth.

To play a role where you get to reveal intellectual change is wonderful.

I think anything goes in fiction as long as it fits within the interior logic of the work itself and is presented in a disciplined manner.

My instinct is to absolutely recoil when talking about writing in a mechanistic way. Nothing could be dumber than writing a film or TV script based on prescriptions, on other peoples' ideas of what character should be.

Things can change on a daily basis in television. You can be introduced to aspects of your character that you had no idea existed because they didn't exist a week before. The next week it might be taken away from you in some way that you can't control.

If you write a story based on a real person, you're trapped by the details of the real person and his life. It gets in the way of writing your own story.

I guarantee you that two directors that are any good can take the same story, change the name of the characters, change the name of the town, and make an entirely different picture.

As a writer myself, my job has very often been to also write on the job. So you get the script and a vague idea of how the scene might work, and you then add funny words or change the script. I'm not the world's best writer or the world's best actor, but I can do that thing where I can fix - or ruin - fix-slash-ruin, add quirk, add value.

It's true that I don't rearrange that much in the fiction, but I feel if you change even one name or the order of one event then you have to call it fiction or you get all the credits of non-fiction without paying the price.

When you talk about fantasy, the usual problem is that whilst you've got the world of imagination, there are no controlling forces.

Unless you're playing a historical figure, a writer or director can change their minds. And sometimes your job is to make them change their minds - to make them believe that you're the one that can do it.

I know a lot of actors who get a part and then they dissect it and they want to change it and they want to add stuff. I'm always amazed and so impressed by actors who do that.

You have to figure out what's important and keep the main points, though I will swing a little outside the box. It affords me the freedom to find out who the character is, and it's been a positive technique for me. I'm not saying everyone should change words, but if you can do it with confidence, you may nail it.

I have seen too many screenwriters of promise become formula addicts and slaves to stop watch structure. Spend that time watching movies, reading screenplays, reading plays, and most importantly - write from your gut.

Back then, it was more or less we couldn't change a line in our script. We weren't allowed to change lines. Today, actors change everything and won't do parts. It's very different today. Back then, the producers were in charge. Today actors are more in charge.

From the moment I got to Hollywood, I've always felt like I never really got to do what I wanted to do. In general, artists feel that you're never really allowed to accomplish what you would like to accomplish because there's just so much of this system that gets in the way; the business gets in the way of the art.

I got history solidly under my belt, reading Russian history and biographies. I couldn't change the facts. I could only play with how the people might have responded to the facts of their lives.

I feel like when you do things with such a small budget, it actually makes you be more creative... and allows you to concentrate more on the story and the characters. I think that there is something about dirty, gritty and raw filmmaking that makes it feel a little more natural and makes it easier to connect with the action.

Writing a novel is easier than writing a memoir; you are not constrained by the truth.

I really believed that if I could play that character, who is grounded in the earth and the history of the United States - not the kind of role I usually play - it would help me change the perception out there and my own perception of what I can accomplish as a performer.

One has to be able to twist and change and distort characters, play with them like clay, so everything fits together. Real people don't permit you to do that.

It can certainly happen that characters in more sophisticated stories can 'take over' as they develop and change the author's original ideas. Well, it certainly happens to me at times.