There couldn't possibly be a more label-driven industry than acting, seeing as every audition comes with a character breakdown: 'Beautiful, sassy, Latina, 20s'; 'African American, urban, pretty, early 30s'; 'Caucasian, blonde, modern girl next door'. Every role has a label; every casting is for something specific.
A virtuous character is likened to an unblemished flower. Piety is a fadeless bud that half opens on earth and expands through eternity. Sweetness of temper is the odor of fresh blooms, and the amaranth flowers of pure affection open but to bloom forever.
As a director, what matters is how you penetrate the soul of the person in front of the camera and let the actor blur the boundaries between the character and the person themselves. In order to achieve that, I try to make people feel at ease, to be mindless of problems and be skinless and give everything to the camera.
My girlfriend tells me if I'm doing a movie I'm a roller coaster of emotions all the time, but on 'Boardwalk,' because I've done it for so long and I'm so in tune with the character, she says I'm pretty happy most of the time.
Now, there are a very large number of bodily movements, having their source in our nervous system, that do not possess the character of conscious actions.
My character on 'Orange is the New Black' is not one that requires being absolutely shredded with 5% body fat. But I wouldn't be opposed to doing that for a role one day.
Disney is very much a child's theater - it's a very specific kind of acting. It's loud and boisterous with the goal to draw the attention of children and keep the attention of children, and it can kind of be cheesy and loud, and I had to unpack a lot of that, because as an actor, you kind of internalize, and you basically become a character.
One of the things I learned very early on is you need to cast the kids for the characters you want them to play. They need to be who they are, right? If you want a loud, boisterous kid character, you need to find that kid.
I can be bolder on the page, as a character. I can gnash my teeth, I can scream and yell, in a way that I'm perhaps too timid to do in real life.
If you're creating your character, you can have full ownership of the emotional range they go through. You can make bolder choices.
I think from an actor's point of view, you always want something to play that's dramatic or something that feels like it could be very bold in choice. And of course, the boldest possible choice you could play at the end of a character's life is death.
I love wearing Converse or Vans and wear a lot of bombers or denim jackets. I'm also a bit of loser, so wear a lot of film and band T-shirts. My friends say that I look like a cartoon character because I'm always wearing the same kind of stuff.
I love Robin Wright's character in 'House of Cards' because she's a bona fide villain. She's a not-nice person in a believable way; you can see her working in the world.
When I'm breaking in a character like Jessica Jones, I have this amazing opportunity to create her backstory. It's all of the work that happens before I'm ever on camera... Writing 'Bonfire' was like doing all of that fun stuff; it was like 300 pages of prep work.
Studying cows, pigs and chickens can help an actor develop his character. There are a lot of things I learned from animals. One was that they couldn't hiss or boo me.
For the most part, my characters don't talk to me. I like to lord over them like some kind of benevolent deity. And, for the most part, my characters go along with it. I write intense character sketches and long, play-like conversations between me and them, but they stay out of the book writing itself.
I love my grey hair and wrinkles. I love the fact that my face has more of an edge and more character than it did when I was in my twenties and thirties. No Botox for me.
The bottom line is, when it comes to an actor and his performance, whether nominated or not, it simply has to do with whether that character had enough resonance with the audience. You know, to the filmgoers. And that something that you can't control.
My dad lived on Sunset Boulevard for a couple of years as a waiter, and he said he'd do a different character every time somebody sat down, just to get some practice.
I'd say that on 'Friends' my character was the guy bouncing around the room. I'm no longer that guy, necessarily, in my life. I used to be. But I'm not now.
