When you adapt a book to a film, you take all the best parts and put them into an hour and 15 minutes and have to compromise on the characters.
I think we all suffer from guilt at some point in our lives, but for the most part I never really regret, and I try to always remain positive. Yes, I think that those issues are very interesting to play in a character, and they're prominent issues in life, and I think people can relate to them.
In the beginning, I would find a character I understood. That was my focus. Not now - but you basically get offered the exact same thing you just did. Which I find hilarious. I did 'The Vow,' and then I had every love story you can imagine thrown at me. And now I'm getting offers for comedies.
Playing a character that allows me to play around with some of the feelings I have inside of myself and explore them - and maybe put them to rest a little bit, or at least come to terms with them - feels successful to me. I think it's about believing in what you do.
I love the supporting characters because you get to do more, to be totally honest. It's been sort of a theme with me. In Son of No One, I think I might have seven lines in the entire movie because everything is happening to my character.
Like most people, Im fascinated by characters who are completely flawed personalities, riven by anguish and doubt, and are psychologically suspect.
It's not that I wrote those details, but photos can give you the confidence that you have a real feel for the landscape. Then you can invent with a solid kind of faith, and recreate a feel and flavor of the time, and, one hopes, a tonality, a sense of that time having been lived by those characters.
Yeah, and the language the "we" has, and the character the "we" has. Because that was the part of the book that I didn't plan out, but the part that I was most curious about as I was writing. You know what you're doing, but you're sometimes still sort of curious as you're writing it.
By definition it uses and plays and delights in time. It delights in the interlacing of chronologies and the consequences of that interlacing. And those have personal and psychological expressions in a character. Aside from other issues of writing, psychological characterization is what narrative can do best.
I think what we want to do is - when we choreograph, when we design choreography, we try to take it from a character standpoint first. Obviously you write a script and it's like, a Jason Bourne or a John Wick or something like that, you don't start choreographing double twisting wire moves and backflips, or doing the splits. You try to keep it so it fits the character, or the tone of the film.
Honestly, when you think of any great action hero or any great hero out there or great character actor, you kind of transcend the character. You just don't love the character, you love the guy. In any of the great action stars, you see the guy doing the work.
Character imperfection is the important thing to keep them from being superheroes.
I've always been drawn to dark, disturbing characters.
I want to try different genres. I think I'll still be looking at a strong female character in the center, and identity struggle and transformation.
It's always been a dream for me to play a comic book character.
When I first got the audition for Shado, I went online and subscribed to DC Comics and read a bunch on Shado and the Yakuza, just to get to know her character better.
I decided that, if I were to write a teen series, I'd want to set it in a place that was familiar to me - Manhattan, where I'd grown up - and I'd model the characters on myself and my friends.
My biggest fear in writing 'Gossip Girl' was that the characters would sound like stereotypical rich, air-headed heiresses. These were my friends. They were smart and multifaceted. They had interests and passions. They wanted to become lawyers and doctors and writers and filmmakers.
Even now, I change my style and clothes from one day to the next, but during high school I blended in. I think a lot of people are that way. I guess that's why I can write about an array of characters.
It's not about finding Mr Right, or that sort of conventional ending, but I do want my characters to have hope - and that's what I do with all my stories.
Robert De Niro taught me how to listen, and how to be part of the conversation. It's not just about reading your lines and saying what's in the script; you have to understand your character, along with the other characters so that you can always respond.
I dont have a favorite genre. I love to work and live vicariously through every character. Its all about trying to bring the character to life and get the story across in a way that resonates with the audience. Its always interesting and challenging in a gratifying and unique way.
I want to bring softness and refinement to an urban, feminine wardrobe and to help the woman show her character and individuality through her unique clothes.
I really wanted our male characters to be a lot stronger. We gave them careers, lives.
If a scene doesn't work on three levels - it's not advancing the story, the characters, and telling me something new - then put it in the trash.
