Michael Sheen Quotes

Big stories need human stakes.

It's hard to be scared if you don't feel for a character, because you don't care if they die or live.

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

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

The audience has to understand that if the film is going to have any meaning for them. If they are going to empathize with the characters, they have to visualize the process of concentration involved in making every move.

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.

If you care about the characters, then whatever scary thing happens to them, you feel it even more.

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

I think there is a difference between connecting with a character and supporting and believing their policies.

If we get caught up in a story, it's because we've started to care about the characters, and that can only happen if we've moved beneath the surface.

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

You have to find something there that relates to the characters and reality on some level.

Television lets audiences deeply connect with characters.

I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.

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.

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

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.

I think you have to love the characters that you write. I don't know how you could possibly write a TV show where you didn't love the characters.

I think it is important that you care about the characters, and you are not just waiting for the next action sequence but have a vested interested in what happens to them.

I try to trace the connection between the characters and that way a story or plot emerges.

Readers embrace all kinds of characters as long as they are written with emotional truth.

And the most important thing - apart from telling a good, believable story, and being a true character - is to be someone the audience will care about, even if you're playing a murderer or rapist.

If the characters are compelling, readers will follow anywhere.

Besides, most of the books I like involve people I could never play in a million years.