Sometimes I'll be fifty, sixty pages into something and I'll still be calling a character "X." I don't have a very clear idea of who the characters are until they start talking. Then I start to love them. By the time I finish the book, I love them so much that I want to stay with them. I don't want to leave them ever.
If you cared enough about your characters, what happened to them was interesting... it's important to care about them, about who they are and what they do...I don't really care whose side they are on, and they can be monstrous on the outside or, worse, on the inside, but you still have to want to spend time with them.
I've played an awful lot of people that other people would call villains, but that isn't a very helpful attitude to have if you're about to play them. They are just people, and they may do dreadful things and say dreadful things, but your job as an actor is to know why they do them or say them.
We could think or feel as we wished toward the characters, or as the poet, discounting history, invited us to; we were the poet's guest, his world was his own kingdom, reached, as one of the poems told us, through the 'Ring of Words.
I never like to judge the character. I just have to leave my feelings of pity, or fear, about a character - whatever I feel towards the character, I try to leave to one side. It's good to have them, but it doesn't help me. I can't act those things. I just to play the character as truthfully as I can.
When you have a set of characters, you have to fall in love with them and care about them as each individual character.
Just don't pretend you know more about your characters than they do, because you don't. Stay open to them. It's teatime and all the dolls are at the table. Listen. It's that simple.
To my way of thinking, whether it's a superhero movie or a romance or a comedy or whatever, the most important thing is you've got to care about the characters. You've got to understand the characters and you've got to be interested. If the characters are interesting, you're half-way home.
I try to treat every job with the exact same level of respect. When I go into it, it doesn't matter what the budget is or who the lead actor is. You should have the same focus and the same drive, and you should have as much empathy for your character and understanding of them as you would, no matter what.
Literary characters, like my grandmother's apparitions, are fragile beings, easily frightened; they must be treated with care so they will feel comfortable in my pages
The funny thing is that I feel close to all my characters. Deep, deep inside them all. I can't describe how deeply I love them all.
