There are certain moments that you have to hit in a film, like when a character cries.
People think I'm thick because of the characters I play. I think I'm brighter than the characters. Well, I hope I am.
It takes stamina to get up like an athlete every single night, seven to eight performances a week, 20 weeks in a row. And there are many young performers who only learn their craft in the two minute bits it takes to film a scene. You never learn the arc of storytelling, the arc of a character that way.
I love when you take bizarre, non-human things and somehow make them human or accessible. I think that's why I like the practical effects. You can look at a creature and still see vulnerability or the character behind the creature. To get character behind CG creatures, that's so few and far between.
Sometimes I make my life a living hell by writing complex stories with complex characters. But I love it.
You, and in fact quite a lot of your generation, have in some way been exiled from that particular sanctuary. It's become almost impossible for someone to "go mad" in the classical sense. At one time people conveniently "went mad" and were never heard from again. Like a character in a romantic novel. But now you are too hip to yourself on a psychological level. You all are too intimate with too many of the symptoms of insanity to be caught completely off your guard.
When I'm writing a woman character, I don't think, 'What would a woman do?' I just think, 'What would this character do in this situation?
I like to create imaginary characters and events around a real historical situation. I want readers to feel: OK, this probably didn't happen, but it might have.
Bill [Condon] is such a great actor's director. He cares about what you're thinking. And, he's very open. Even though he was pressed for time, and he was doing two movies at once, and all this stuff was happening around him, he would still take time to sit there and talk to you about your scene and your character and what you were going through. That was really a treat.
It is fun, revisiting a role. Usually, as an actor, you do a movie and you put that character up on a shelf, and he's done. That character is now immortalized on film, but you don't get to play him again. In these films [Twilight saga], we got to revisit these characters, and we didn't take that for granted.
With each movie [Twilight saga], we went in trying to explore that character a little deeper, or in a different sense. But, at the same time, there was a comfort in knowing that you know this person.
All people live in a fantasy in which they are the main character.
I loved the role [of John Wick]. I loved the action. I loved all the new characters. The world expands into the Underworld. It's getting bigger. Yeah, it was a really great experience [in John Wick 2].
What I love about watching classic horror films is that they take you on a ride and they obviously make you scared because you're so invested in the characters, you're almost forgetting that oh my God, this is about to scare me.
When I read scripts and when I read books, it's more of an emotional response and I was really drawn to these characters.
I'm not writing great literature. I'm writing commercial fiction for people to enjoy the stories and to like the characters.
Be patient and gentle with yourself as you continue to learn new ways of eating and living. There is no need for hard-and-fast rules or white-knuckle determination. Keep leaning forward into the positive changes you are making, and then apply that same gentleness to your family and community.
I do tend to play characters that have a lot of costume and hair change. I sort of like the change of physicality thing.
I think every character I play has a physicality to them, so I have to stay in some sort of shape. I'll never be a size two. And I don't want to be a size two.
When you're shooting you go to references in your mind. You think about how you should stand in these particular clothes, or how you should move. You think about the different characters you're playing, really.
I always wanted to be a character, when I worked at Disney, but I wasn't short enough for certain characters and I wasn't tall enough for others. I wanted to be a chipmunk; I think 4'10" was the cutoff.
I have a tendency as an actress in general to ground my characters. Even when doing outlandish characters, that's my instinct.
I recurred on Grey’s Anatomy for three years, and at the same time, I recurred for eight episodes on Rescue Me. And I’d recurred for nine episodes on The Practice. Frankly, the guest star is often the most compelling character.
In the movie [Everybody Loves Somebody], the sister tells my character, "No, don't you want to be with someone?" I think the family - especially in this movie - they know that the reason that Clara doesn't want to have an emotional, intimate relationship is more because she was hurt so badly from heartbreak that she's then being closed off and cynical.
The need to raise itself above humanity is humanity's main characteristic.
