Jackie Collins Quotes

You really have to create everything in order to come away with a full human being on screen.

Characters are not created on paper or laptop alone.

No author can create a character out of nothing. He must have a model to give him a starting point; but then his imagination goes to work, he builds him up, adding a trait here, a trait there, which his model did not possess.

I love... What's gratifying to me is when you make/create a character and a human being, a person who lives entirely and who has their own existence, just merely from the words on a page.

I just love to be able to actually build a character.

When I create characters, I create a world to inhabit and they begin to feel very real for me. I don't belong in a psych ward, I don't think, but they become very real, like my own family, and then I have to say goodbye, close the door, and work on other things.

One of the things about writing fiction is that you create people that you feel, more or less, as though you know.

I suppose it's easier for most writers to create and vivify characters of their own gender.

What I'm really trying to do is create unique characters.

I take stuff from real life and try to make a character out of it. And I try to live the world of the characters a little bit.

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

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.

I love rehearsals and I love creating a character, sticking with it until you have something to tell. It's always different though. Sometimes a director will tell you from day one what they want. Then you throw in your idea.

When complicated characters aren't well drawn, they're boring.

I wouldn't like to be a character in one of my books!

I don't ever really know where I get my characters from.

With writing fiction, I'm either not courageous enough or just not suited for telling truths in a more conventional way. As an actor, I inhabit those characters as I'm writing them.

Writing can give full meaning to characters and avoid pure stereotype.

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.

Sometimes a character is really based on research that you do. Other times it's just based on your imagination or perhaps your conversation with the director. Or sometimes all of the above. It depends on the movie and character.

And I have the support of the writers: I have a great relationship with the creative team, and they have a good hold of my character and my personality, and they come up with some great stuff, and I'm forever trying to change it up, keep it fresh.

I like to build a character, trying to stretch my imagination as far to the walls of my brain as I can to come up with something that feels truthful and feels real - as close to the skin as I can get it.

I find it easier to play someone who is so far from me because you create someone - you build this person based on the story and the script, with the director.

I love telling stories. Creating a character, a world, a whole universe out of nothing. That part I can't get enough of.