I try to distinguish my characters from each other.
I think I was always interested in darker characters just because there was a lot more to do.
I only work with actors who take full responsibility for their characters.
You have to play your characters, not like them.
I've learned a lot about stage-managing for illustration. Sometimes you have to delete characters from a scene just to keep from overcrowding the image. I've also learned to making big-scale design decisions early.
At the beginning of the project, I wasn't certain that I could come up with an engaging storyline and cast of characters in this world, so I had a strong bias toward actually writing, and worrying about research later. In other words, I was afraid that I'd devote a year or two of my life to grinding through Kant and Husserl, then discover that there simply was no novel to be written here.
I think you will agree that I am alive in every part of this book; turn back twenty, thirty, one hundred pages - I am back there. That is why I hate the story; characters are not snakes that they must shed their skins on every page - there can only be one action: what a man is. When you have understood this, you will be through with novels.
I'm a geeky toy collector, and to have toys of your own characters is unbelievably cool.
Redemption is something you have to fight for in a very personal, down-dirty way. Some of our characters lose that, some stray from that, and some regain it.
It's something that people relate to - and I hope my kid doesn't relate to - but there's a level of believability in playing complex characters. You know, Christopher Walken has done some hilarious comedies, De Niro. There's great room for complexity and darkness to do well in comedies.
Our easiest approach to a definition of any aspect of fiction is always by considering the sort of demand it makes on the reader. Curiosity for the story, human feelings and a sense of value for the characters, intelligence and memory for the plot. What does fantasy ask of us? It asks us to pay something extra.
I like to think of characters in relation to other cinematic characters.
All I want to do is write songs about funny characters I made up.
I'm always interested in characters who are closed down, but who open up when they choose to, rather than when they're obliged to. I think that's a very appealing thing, for an audience and just in life. I like the idea that something will say nothing, and then get straight to the point. That feels like how your heroes should be.
I was a repertory actor, which meant that I did a play every week. I was a different character every week; for a year, I was doing 40 or 50 characters.
Most men like in women what is most opposite their own characters.
. . . But I don't think I'm the only person who is tired of books and movies full of paper-doll characters you don't care about, who have no self-respect and no respect for anybody or any institution. . . . And I don't want to sound preachy or Victorian, but I'm tired of amorality in fiction and in real life. Immorality is a fascinating human dilemma that creates suspense for the readers and tension for the characters, but where is the tension in an amoral situation? When people have no personal code, nothing is threatening and nothing is meaningful.
Helmut Newton shot the ad campaign [for Bad Influence]. It's [James] Spader at the top of his game, right after Sex, Lies And Videotape. It's sexy. It's weird. It's dark. The characters are great.
I would love to play a main character and then play different characters as well. I would want for it to be a sitcom, multicamera, audience - that's definitely a dream. It's in the works, so. . . it's closer than everybody thinks it is.
The thing that cracks me up is how these reality characters start out thrilled and excited just to be on television, and how they move to thinking they are as big as the Friends.