One of the things that separates a good genre movie from a bad genre movie, I always think, ironically, is when you care about the people. The dime a dozen ones are where you don't have any awareness of the character.
I try to talk about things I know about. But my characters are more of a combination of people or how I imagine people would feel.
A novel makes it possible to understand not just events, but the people who control the events; not only their choices, but also their motives.
First comes an idea. Then, characters begin to evolve out of the landscape of that idea. And then, finally, characters dominate: plot is simply a function of what these people might do or be. Everything has to flow from their personalities; otherwise it will not be emotionally engaging, or plausible.
I think in some ways, acting and writing are the same. You're getting inside the skin of someone else; you're creating their language and their actions. As a writer, you have to see the whole picture and the structure, and you have to understand every character.
It can be a fictional character and yet relatable... It always depends on the content of the film and what you are doing.
Plot and character are virtually the same thing.
I take stuff from real life and try to make a character out of it. And I try to live the world of the characters a little bit.
But for me, the challenge is how you turn a character into behavior. Once the director says 'action', you just try to live between those two worlds.
I like looking at the characters. Seeing them always brings up some voice or attitude. I am much more visual, and that works so much better than having someone tell me what the character is all about.
Finding the voice of a character, no matter who it is - from Black Widow to Han Solo - is the first and most important hurdle for me to cross in any work of fiction.
I think, when I write, one of the things that I'm really attempting to do is I'm attempting to humanize my characters.
I've seen unpublished manuscripts where the writer doesn't know they are making fun of the villain - but they are. If you aren't afraid of your villain, how can your hero be afraid?
You play your character and it isn't right to step out of it. You have to stay in that character.
Dialogue is the place that books are most alive and forge the most direct connection with readers. It is also where we as writers discover our characters and allow them to become real.
The instant that movies became described as character driven was the instant when characters stopped mattering in movies. In other words, the birth of the notion of the character-driven movie coincided with the birth of movies in which characters were incidental to the very activities in which they engaged.
In terms of the pilot, you have to introduce a lot of characters in a very short period of time, and you have to paint with slightly broad brush strokes because you just need to give an audience an idea of who these people might be.
Whether it is television or film, the character on the page has to speak to me.
The thing that I like about action sequences is that if they're done well, you get to know more about the character in those few minutes than you do through 10 minutes of exposition.
It's a real challenge to have someone perform a character vs. imitate a character.
I've found I can plunge the characters into whatever absurd, awful situation, and readers will follow as long as the writer makes them seem like 'real people.'
I don't like having characters as props. I never want a character to be a prop.
Definitely later on in the 'Life is Strange' season one recording, we were all pretty tuned into who these characters were. There wasn't a whole lot of finagling that needed to be done, I don't think.
As an actor, when you want to capture the spirit of the character, and the character exists in all of the iterations slightly differently, you work towards getting a sense of what the creators wanted to do, you know? Then, you work off of that.
I like method actors who don't focus on the glamorous side, but on realistic acting.
