Doug Liman Quotes

It's much easier to come back as a recurring character. Because you already know his traits and who he is and what he's about.

When you find you don't like a character, you just type four letters and he's dead.

A lot of times I'll make films that are mostly character-driven films - stories that involve people. Like, I make the joke: I like to make movies about human beings that live on Earth.

My favorite roles usually have to do with the story, if it's a good story I usually enjoy doing the character.

I am looking for a character that connects to me on some level. It has to be about something, it has to have depth to it and it has to be about something. The story of the character and their relationship with the people and places around them appeal to me and are what I look for.

In 'Poster Boys,' every character is well defined.

In a novel, it's hard to keep track of everybody.

I don't know quite how a story develops in my head. It is a bit chaotic. If I am working on a series, one of the main characters at least is already in existence as well as some setting and minor characters. Finding the other main character can be a challenge. Sometimes this character already exists in a minor role in another book.

All fiction is about people, unless it's about rabbits pretending to be people. It's all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that's what we call 'the plot'.

I know all actors are different, but I've never sat down and asked the writers, 'Where are we headed? Am I good or bad?'

You've got to leave the reader with more than just a name and a costume - they need to know who the character is, what they're like, what kind of attitude they have, what sort of role they play.

I usually start with a repulsive character and go on from there.

You treat characters like people you meet in life-friends or mentors.

I'm drawn particularly to stories that evolve out of the character of the protagonist.

Well, first of all, you read the script a million times. Because what the script gives you are given circumstances. Given circumstances are all the facts of your character.

I rarely return to characters. My characters, at least most of them, are much more a part of that superorganism that is the story than separate and independent creatures.

Every single film I've done, it's about the character.

The characters are always the focal point of a book for me, whether I'm writing or reading. I may enjoy a book that has an intriguing mystery or a good plot, but to become one of my real favorites, it has to have great characters.

You have to create characters - certainly in series TV - who people engage with. They don't have to be nice; you don't have to agree with them. But they do have to be compulsively watchable and believable and human, and you want to know what happens to them.

But I also wanted to give them an intelligent emotional journey, without having to suspend reality - to be able to look at those characters and see reasons for the relationships and why what happens happens.

The stories that I like to tell and the movies I like are always grounded in the emotional arc of the characters.

You just play what a writer writes, in terms of what a character chooses to do and how a character chooses to deal with their various relationships.

I can tell you that as a writer and as a reader, I regard character as king. Or queen. No matter how riveting the action or interesting the plot twists, if I don't feel like I'm meeting someone who feels real, I'm not going to be compelled to read further.

I'm tired of playing freaking cha-chas, the sassy CIA agent, the best friend homegirl. I'm tired of that!

The bedrock of 'Being Human' has to be characters. I would hope that even if suddenly we had a huge budget per episode, the foundation of the show, and the thing that actually makes it what it is, is character.