Mark Millar Quotes

In the U.S., Superman or Batman or something, the law-enforcement people, are the most famous comic characters. Americans have a respect, I think, for badges and a respect for uniforms. I think that's, in some ways, quite a nice thing, but it can be dangerous, too, because it can obviously be abused.

... characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something essential about.

I don't want to know about the lives of other actors and I don't want people to know too much about me. If we don't know about the private lives of other actors, that leaves us as clean slates when it comes to playing characters. That's the point, they can create these other characters and I can believe them. I think if you're a good enough actor, that's the way to longevity in the film business. Keep everybody guessing.

I worked with some of the best actors I've ever worked with: Mel Blanc and Don Messick. They could play a scene against themselves. Think of the characters that Mel created, and they're as good or better than any performance anyone has ever given. I mean: Daffy Duck! Think of the specific voice Mel gave Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny or Porky Pig... It's just astonishing.

I seem to have been cast several several times to do it. I think in this one, Phoenix is not purely evil. She was in the comic books at some point but the way the writers created her or we always talked about her, was that she was torn with her powers taking over and trying to control them at the same time. It was challenging to play which made it interesting for me to play this character.

Everybody has their favorite character.That's the only way I pick, whatever is going on in society, whatever I think folks will laugh at that's what I come up with.

Everybody has felt at one time or another that everyone else in the world had a better shot than they did, so when you engage that, you engage the reader, and I think you create a character that brings the reader more fully into the story.

I never ever would have thought initially it would have been someone like Pierce playing Charles. I think he has an innate likeability to him, as soon as you meet him he's very, very charismatic. Charles, on the page, was someone who's very domineering and quite a negative character, and Pierce just by being Pierce can change the whole dynamic of it, which made for a much for interesting relationship. He's a really nice guy.

I have always been more interested in creating a character that contains something crippled. I think nearly all of us have some kind of defect.

It's really nice when you can sit down with somebody and just talk to them, and talk about your ideas and what you think the character is, and they respond to it. It's a really nice way to do it, but it doesn't happen very often.

I always begin with a character or characters, and then try to think up as much action for them as possible.

It's rewarding for me to have people know me as two very different characters. I think when you see people as one character, you expect that they are like that character. So it's nice to be able to throw people for a loop a little bit.

Another strand of my writing is the importance of the idea. If you think about fiction writing as a spectrum, where at one end of the spectrum in the infrared, are the story tellers, and the people for whom creation of wonderful characters and telling a good story is the most important thing.

When you think about the person responsible for creating the character and the dialogue, Bill Monahan, who's a Boston guy, obviously, his words roll off my tongue quite nicely.

It's always nice when someone says that they don't realize it's me on screen, but it would be strange to enter a one story while thinking of another character I do, which is completely different.

I don't do all the background and the worldbuilding before I start the story. What I do is I work out the bare minimum I need to start the story, and often that really is a bare minimum - it's a character in a situation, and I know nothing about the character, I know nothing about the situation, and then I think about it for a long time, and make notes about where I think the story is going to go and so on, but I don't really make notes to do with the background or the magic system or the world.

I think it's the source material. 27 Dresses was a famous book, and Devil Wears Prada was also a wonderful book, so it's coming out of the novelists who are really creating these wonderful female characters that we want to see on the big screen.

The one nice thing about doing a character for a long time is, you begin to feel more comfortable, and you are thinking less and behaving more. It's always best not to be thinking a hell of a lot while you're acting, because you want it to be as spontaneous as possible, not too intellectual. Just behaving and listening to other people who you're doing scenes with. I always like the latter when it looks easy, even though it may not be.

When I'm putting the character together I try to find music that I think fits the character.

I think improv training really orients you to character development, more than taking a Strasberg class or Meisner class. Not only is it about developing character really quickly, but it's also about being a good partner in the scene.

I think when you have a character as richly drawn, I suppose then there are subconscious, mental notes that you've made.

I have no idea and I think Steven King strongest suit is the characters that he does create, all in the same area where he lives. The way he describes them is one of his fortes and it boggles my mind how he's able to do that and to create so many. It must be thousands by now.

And it interferes with your ability to be a good actress if you're constantly aware of yourself as a person. To me, it isn't valuable to think about how I'm coming off all the time if I'm trying to create a character, because that's a process that I love. It's like falling in love and surrendering to another person or a character.

The one nice thing about doing a character for a long time is, you begin to feel more comfortable, and you are thinking less and behaving more.

People who are well-known, famous people, I think, make very poor characters for fiction. They make good characters for gossip columns. But not for fiction.