Ne-Yo Quotes

I want to re-mythologize 'The Green Hornet' in a contemporary context, with an emphasis on story and character, while at the same time incorporating themes that speak to my heart.

Shakespeare does a great job of taking 5,000-year-old stories and turning them into modern pieces that are true to the original essence but are completely remade.

I think that what we were doing with the live musical version of 'Shrek' was taking the ideas and the structure of the movie and not necessarily reinventing it but reimagining it. It is a very different medium to perform.

During my career I've enjoyed re-invigorating and contextualizing classic characters that are relatable to contemporary audiences.

We felt we had to know something of his back story. I don't think people in the cinema would just accept that he's there. I think we had to learn how he (got there).

That has been everybody's challenge, above the dancing, the singing, the lines: getting into who these characters would be in 2015. Today's Tin Man is heartfelt, but he wouldn't be soft. Today's Dorothy would be sassy.

I love the challenge of taking established, iconic comics characters and showing readers why they remain contemporary.

I don't think I could stay interested for a couple of months in a character of mean motivation.

There was a time when people liked to take Shakespeare and twist him around to make whatever social or political statement they wanted to make.

I work in musical theater because people keep writing quality stories in the genre, and I'm really all about investing in a piece that says something about our current time, that is, a reflection on who we are today.

I like to make films with characters that resemble real people, about societies that exist.

As an actor, you have to find reasons why your character made her decisions, and you have to empathise with her.

As a writer, I find that a good way of evolving a character is through an examination of his or her defining relationships - and what's more defining than a relationship with someone you love?

A lot of people say to me, 'Is this good, to do to a Shakespeare piece?' And I think, 'You know, 'West Side Story' did it very cleverly, in a different way.' But if you look at 'Bonnie and Clyde,' 'Titanic,' 'Avatar,' 'Grease,' 'Brokeback Mountain'... they're all 'Romeo and Juliet' stories.

Know what your characters want, know what they need most, know what they fear most, and don't be fearful of facing it, no matter how unpleasant it may be.

I let action rise out of character, really.

Changes can be made. New decisions can be made. If people say, 'It's not like that in the comics!' Well, comic books reinvent their characters a lot. They do different things with them all the time. They're always changing, always keeping things fresh. So that shouldn't be an issue if the race changes for a character.

My introduction to Motown was through The Jackson Five and Michael Jackson. Michael's been my greatest creative inspiration, so that's how I really became familiar with Motown as a whole, and as I got older, I learned far more about the other groups.

It's nice to go back and look at the original version of Cyborg in the 1980s, when he was created, and seeing how politically and socially charged they were: it was no holds barred. If DC ever made a return to that social awareness and that sort of context, I'd be super-thrilled to see that.

I think there was an opportunity as Bad News Barrett to turn me in to a babyface. I am not saying that I would have gotten to the level The Rock got to but it was certainly a chance for me to do something different and keep me motivated and stimulated by what I was doing on the show.

For each character, I try to understand what is driving them.

A lot of times, female characters - particularly the villains - come off as very one-dimensional. They get the short shrift in that they're only given the snappy comeback, or they're relegated to a very stereotypical role. I want to know what's driving them - that's what's really interesting.

Michael Jackson loved epic symbols. In his shows and his videos, he always destroyed or salvaged worlds; he was the hero of parables about street violence, sexual combat, war and natural disaster. It was always apocalypse or apotheosis now.

I love working out to Michael Jackson.

Every child in every country in every small town should know who I am. There are a handful of people who have achieved that, and two of them are my idols Michael Jackson and Bruce Lee. I'd like to get to that level someday and touch as many lives as I can.