Carlton Cuse Quotes

There's always that key to every character that lets you go to those places you need to go to. No matter how much you might hate the character, it makes you understand it.

What I try to do in writing any character is to put myself in his position.

What interests me when I'm writing is being able to crawl into a character's head and speak from his or her mouth. It's not pulling the strings on a marionette, it's not playing ventriloquist, and it's not mimicry. It's about inhabiting a character, and, at the same time, being totally unaware of what you've become.

You have to have sympathy for and an empathy with a character in order to play them.

As a writer, you have to put yourself in service to the character, get behind their eyes by delineating the world where the character develops. You have to listen to the character and see him inside his certain world to know what conclusions he would draw.

As an actor, you don't really have a say or a voice in what the conversation of the show is going to be. So, as an actor, I'm just trying to make sense of why the character is making these choices, and somehow, in that way, you can sympathize or root, at least not detest, what this person is doing. That's, at least, my job in telling that story.

I do think you need to understand a character's motivation and perspective.

We're all the heroes of our own stories. So, when I am inside the head of a character who would otherwise be considered a villain, I have a great deal of affection for that character and I'm trying to see the world and the events through their eyes.

But when you get to know a character so well, you start to have insights that you can't show because you're confined to your script of your hit show.

If you never fall in love with your character, you'll never be able to do that character justice. No matter who it is, no matter what the character does, you have to find the reason for it. Everyone's got a reason for what they do, even if it's a reason that they're not proud of.

I don't think you have to like a character, but if you can understand why they do what they do, or the position they're in or why they make certain choices, then you can get behind them.

I like all my characters in one way or another, or at least I understand them.

I'm not interested in playing characters who see the world through my prism; I think the journey of understanding any character is to see how they tick and how they differ from you.

One of the great lessons I learned about historical fiction from writing 'Loving Frank' is that you don't try to disguise what people did; my approach was to try to understand the characters and why they did what they did.

Novels attempt to render human experience; that's really all they are. They are meant to convey empathy for the character.

To read a character I'm not sympathizing with is generally quite a good, attractive proposition because I've got somewhere to go, I've got work to do, to try to understand why they behave like they behave, to relate entirely and understand them and to be completely emotionally connected. That is much more fun 99 percent of the time.

My school of thought with going into a character is that you have to understand where they come from, and you have to empathize with them.

When a script moves me, I find that I immediately understand a character. Of course not completely, but I do understand.

When I step into a character's shoes, I don't judge them. I make a conscious effort not to look from the outside in but look from the inside out, and when you do that it allows you to feel and sense things more, and act and react from a core, you know?

I think the idea is to try and understand everything about the characters and where the character is coming from, from their point of view, why they say what they do. And not, 'Oh, but I would never say that. Why does the character say that?' But then making it as personal as possible.

I try mainly to just focus on character and what my character's point of view is, with each person, and try to figure out story.

I don't really distinguish between sympathy and honesty when I'm writing. The two go together - I'm interested in inhabiting my characters, seeing the world through their eyes.

As authors, most - most authors, our art is portraying the human condition. Trying to show you what it's like to be somebody else, trying to make you feel for somebody else. That means you have to have a high degree of empathy.

I think when you play a role, you always have to be a defense attorney for that character.

What I've tended to do is to use my own experiences to get into someone else's mind, like in Wuthering Heights.