If I had different parents who were in it for the money, I might have a different perspective. But they really are artists; they intelligently approach each character and prepare in every sense of the word. I grew up in a world that had great discipline.
Usually I'm pretty myopic. It's hard for me to multi-task, so to speak. If I'm in a show and I'm creating a character, I'm just completely into that. It's really hard for me to do anything else like write music. I have to sort of shut down different sides of my head and just focus.
When you're little, you're open to things. It's not like you get into this rehearsed zone when you're a child. At first you play different sides of yourself. And I think it will be really exciting one day to have a character to go into that's not anything like me whatsoever.
There are lots of different sides to Brooklyn. It has so much character.
You have to have a character; you have to build your character. If you understand the pro wrestling scheme of things, then you understand what the promoting is. These guys are friendly backstage, but as soon as the cameras turn on, it's a whole different story: you become that character.
Other kinds of movie stars, it's a different thing, they bring their persona to the part and that's what people like to see, and they are not really transforming in terms of their character.
Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of acting: character acting and lead acting. And in my life, to begin with, in the 1980s, it was all character acting. And then when, by fluke, through 'Four Weddings', I got into doing lead parts, it's a completely different thing.
You want to play another kind of character in another genre, and it's been something I've been trying to do if I can in the career so far, and it's something I hope to continue because it's interesting to me and you get to do different things as an actor.
Every person has a different view of another person's image. That's all perception. The character of a man, the integrity, that's who you are.
'One Day' is definitely heartbreaking in a few ways, but one of the main ways is that my character and Jim Sturgess's character are just people from two different worlds who love each other in so many ways and can't quite seem to get it together.
It's hard for people to differentiate between a character they see on television and a person who plays the character.
When it comes to films, people often don't differentiate between the message of a bad central character and the message of the film itself. They are two separate things.
I think it's hard to differentiate between your wrestling character and your real character - you kind of end up being both. I've always been my wrestling character in and out of the ring and in and out of the dressing room, and I was always really respected in the dressing room by the other wrestlers.
I think the key divide between the interactive media and the narrative media is the difficulty in opening up an empathic pathway between the gamer and the character, as differentiated from the audience and the characters in a movie or a television show.
Failure to take note of the fact that the character of twentieth-century humanity differs from that of humanity in the fifteenth century, let alone before and at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, is to sleep through the process of world evolution.
One thing that I love about 'Difficult People' is that Julie Klausner and our showrunner, Scott King, have written the lead character I play as a fully formed man.
Even the finest actors will have great difficulty showing somebody's loneliness. To put an actor on a chair and ask him to do nothing and yet tell the viewer everything about the character, it's a difficult task.
Everyone is complicated one way or another. But it's interesting to dig into a complicated character, to try to find that within yourself.
I like being the lead but I like being in an ensemble. There are different challenges and dilemmas with both. If you're carrying a film, there's a certain weight, but there are a lot of scenes to explore the character. When you're in an ensemble, you have to convey the entire character in a limited number of scenes.
I think one of the successes of Gladiator is how we manage to turn on a dime the character from one thing to another where you believe he is one thing and he is something very different.
