Michelangelo Antonioni Quotes

Any script, even like The Founder, if it's something that I imagine myself playing this character or that character - any of the characters, basically - how do we flesh these characters out to be good enough to have amazing actors that come in that make it really difficult for them to say no? Even though I'm not right for any of those parts, that's just kind of how we go about it.

I think the writing and the casting and all of that has so much to do with actors becoming their characters. I think if an actor is right for a role, casting sees that and the words that are on the page, depending on how it's written, can really help your character develop.

When I'm writing novels, even screenplays, it's never an actor I have in mind; it's always the version in my head of who the character is. Once somebody gets cast, I have to adjust a little bit to who they are.

Doing a film, or being sent scripts to look at a certain character, it's very odd for me. I tend to take it very personally.

My own personal process with movies is to develop the characters with the actors and, when I've done that properly, you can't imagine anyone else, but that actor, playing that part.

Casting is everything. Getting the person that you imagined is this character and then seeing what they bring to it.That's why you hire them, so why tell somebody first what it is you want? I'm more curious to see what they bring to it and then be inspired by it and say: "OK, what if you tried this?" or "What would happen if ... ?"

As an actor, you use the things from yourself that you can apply to the character.

In terms of how I work with actors, having worked so heavily on the script I have a very clear idea of the characters; they are reasonably well illustrated in the script. If you cast it right, to a great degree you can hand it over to the actor and I just make suggestions. I'm not the kind of director who needs or wants to get into too much finessing. Ideally, when you hit the set, you have this conversation, like, 'eh, what did you think?' 'I don't know, what did you think?' 'Why don't we just try it again, make a few physical changes.'

I don't think of an actor. I think in the character, and then I search for the actor. Usually I'm thinking without names, because they will change my idea. No big egos. If I want egos - just mine. That is enough.

I would compare it to an actor. I drive myself into the character that later on is in the ring.

I always just get excited about the character. When something rings true for me, then I'm ready to do it.

It's fun to act, but for me, it's more fun to actually create the character and act it out knowing that I know everything about this character. That's more fun to me than just reading lines.

The first thing, the main thing, about how I work is I need to understand the character.

As an actor you bring some of your own experiences which can make things easier. You build off of it, but your imagination is always the best thing you have as far as creating things I think specifically for what that character is going through. But you're definitely drawing obviously upon things that you can connect to, and then you kind of mold the change that you're making into something that's right for the character.

It kind of varies. I don’t have a method yet. It depends on the script and the character I think I need. I’ve worked with acting coaches, researched roles, and channeled different parts of myself. It’s on a case-by-case for me, right now.

Well, you put a little piece of yourself into every character that you do. Even if you're playing some psychotic person, which of course I'm not, some part of you is in that character and it's hopefully believable. I always come back to the fact that my own instinct is better than something I build in my mind.

It's fashionable for modern actors to talk about getting 'inside' a character. But you can't get to the inside without getting the outside right first.

I always love costume, and I'm always heavily involved in how things should look. Or how they should feel really, because that's part of the way I suppose I get into character in some ways. It's a lot about costume.

You set up the look, the visual effects and the sets, and that's awesome, but I enjoy the casting most of all. That's where you really get to define the show.

Good looks should never become a part of your internal character.

I don't intentionally try to find the scripts with unattractive characters, but I think that if a character is described in a script as heart-stoppingly beautiful, and there's nothing else said about her, it just doesn't hold a lot of interest for me.

I started taping my dad's auditions when I was 11, when he was auditioning actors for one of his movies. I would see, over and over again, that there wasn't just one actor for the role. It was really clear that there were a lot of people who could play a character really well, and it would always come down to something kind of weird and non-obvious as to why a person was cast. If you're not right, you're not right, but that's okay.

The first couple of weeks of filming were quite tricky for me to find my feet with the character [Maigret], which wasn't helped by the story that we were telling.

It's very rewarding to see the movie, and it's very rewarding to make the movie, but playing the character [Riddick] is sometimes a lot more difficult than other characters because it takes so much preparation to get into that character.

I love character roles. I'm happier in them. I look for roles that have some kind of complexity.