I think you have to find the humanity in the character and then the deterioration is a part of the process - the journey of the character. It's like playing King Lear. You can start off as a nice old man who finishes up crazy.
Imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private as well as in public.
Away with that folly that her rights would be detrimental to her character - that if she were recognized as the equal to a man she would cease to be a woman!
Character develops itself in the stream of life.
I'd like to play a guy who doesn't think so much. I'd like a character whose words come out before he thinks about it. I want a character who is just kind of dumb in that way. A guy who doesn't have too many dangerous, devious ideas. It would be fun to play a role like that.
I watched 'Dexter,' but it ended in a really weird way. I think it's going to start over again because he's a new character; he's like a fisherman.
The way I approach acting when there's a real life character, it's sort of like a Venn diagram. What I come up with is some amalgam of the two of us.
My whole background is character acting: weird costumes, fat suits, playing men, playing animals - I've never played anyone with whom there's any overlapping Venn diagram.
When someone on screen portrays a character that behaves in a way you don't expect, you're subverting ideas. So if there's a Venn diagram between why people are drawn to the characters I play, it may be that. But I'd like to think that the craft of acting and the choices I make as an actor are drawing people on their own merits.
One of the things I have loved so much about the career that I have had is that pretty much every character I have played is diametrically opposite to the one before it.
Well, my mom is single and we've both been single at the same time over the last ten years, so I really related to the bond between my character and Diane's.
It's funny, I used to do a character that was just a baby - just an adult baby. I would get up onstage and complain about adult stuff, but as a baby. I was in a diaper, and I would require hugs from the audience and reassurance and stuff.
When I was growing up, there was a character on TV; there was a character stereotype: it was personified by Mel on 'The Dick Van Dyke Show.'
The character of our language defines us, and dictionaries say as much about us as about the way we speak.
Normally, I love to go to the movies and when I see a character portrayed by different actors at different ages, it kind of pops a little bit for me. It brings me out of the movie experience. Now we have the technology to cure that.
I would say that the woman's ability to multi-task and to be maternal in instinct, it fosters a different approach to the character that makes sense as an actor.
It's really rare to come across a character, a show, or a movie that allows you to completely play four or five different characters within a season, let alone a week.
I have a color-coded computer spreadsheet that divides things down to chapter fragments. Each character's point-of-view is a different color. The text of the manuscript is color-coded the same way. The last thing I do before submitting the manuscript is turn all those colors back to black.
The cool thing about doing a voice-over into a different language is that you get to bring the character of your own culture into it.
Usually, at the end of a film it's like I've finally gotten to know this person completely, and then we're done. That actually happened on the set of 'Twilight,' and then it happened again on 'New Moon.' Each time my character Bella became a different person, and I got to know that person and take her to the next level.
