Despite the fact that wanted to voice aclassic character, a majority of my day-to-day is not Porky Pig. It's commercials and original characters, promos and other aspects of the business. Porky's just kind of high-profile.
I'm fortunate in that I'm what you call a utility player, in that I can take a scene, if there's five or six minor characters in a scene, that need voice and personality [and] I can supply those characters.
It's not most important to communicate myself on stage as it is to be as funny or interesting as I possibly can on stage. I feel more like I'm doing a play whose main character just happens to share my name.
I can't always pick and choose, but I try very hard to take the roles where they are a bit more human. Sometimes there's a hilarious thing that comes along and it might not be the most interesting character, but I'm just delighted to be able to do something.
It's a music video but she was real specific on the character that Mary J. Blige was playing, and that I was playing in this video and I told her whenever you get to jump to the big screen I'd love to come with you and she honored that.
It could be a great script but the director is not the right person for me to work for at this time. So there are a lot of elements that come into play and a lot of variables, but more than anything it's got to be a great script and a great character.
In terms of the black female audience, usually if you're true to that character but more so in your body of work if you've proven that you love your sisters and you proven you will come back home like in 42.4% they'll give you a pass when you jump ship. I hear it all the time.
I believe in books. I believe more in cross-media - how characters are adapting across mediums.
Tom Kenny is a master of changing a pubic hair this way or that way, and sounding like a totally different character.
It's very hard to take a character out of nothing, and put a hook on it, especially because it's only sonic. Futurama is a sonic world, and everyone's attention is focused on that sound and that little cartoon image. You can change it.
But the throat just kind of falls into line once you realize in your head what it is. You got to remember the musicality of a character you're going to do.
Somebody's real voice is probably the hardest one that somebody could attempt. The characters are all, believe it or not, rooted in a reality of some sort. I've met and talked to people, and they're also fusions of showbiz periphery. But the best thing was, if you did your own voice and you were the star of the show - if it came to blows and they had you on the ropes and you had to leave, then they could just get someone to sound exactly like you.
To me, it all comes down to things being character-driven. It's hard for me to look beyond that. CG and all this cool stuff - so be it. But to me, it pretty much begins and ends with character-driven plots rather than technologically-driven plots.
We were on As the World Turns together with Trevor Vaughn. We played brothers on the show. Our friendship started there. We would punch each other in the face, in the nuts, while we were acting. Our characters are supposed to hate each other, but we actually got along really, really well.
I never went after character payments. I'm pretty much terrible at naming characters, so I usually name them after people I know.
I used to search and search for that actor or actress who's exactly what's in my head. But you have to realize you have to cast whoever's super talented and super funny, and then the character has to become at least partially theirs.
Truly a legend in our time, John Templeton understands that the real measure of a person's success in life is not financial accomplishment but moral integrity and inner character.
I put a lot of time and energy and thought behind what I do and the characters that I create, and I don't want to do anything peripheral that is going to make an audience see me up there on the screen rather than who I'm playing.
Performing as a musician is a lot different than performing as an actor. As an actor, you can hide behind the character in the play, and there's a director and other actors. When you're a musician, you're right there. It's sort of like being a comedian. You're giving the audience in real time something authentic from yourself. As an actor, my bullshit meter was going off like crazy at my first attempts to find my own rock star.
All you really have when you're acting is the confidence and your ability to manage and tell a story by creating a character.
I reached a point in my life where I felt like I was living through some old character.
I'm viewed as this weird, crippled character. But you got to take your lumps.
I don't wanna play this kind of cartoon character anymore.
I was a pretty happy kid, I had to fake it. I had to get into this miserable character before I wrote poems.
There's this pet phrase about writing that is bandied around particularly in workshops about "finding your own voice as a poet", which I suppose means that you come out from under the direct influence of other poets and have perhaps found a way to combine those influences so that it appears to be your own voice. But I think you could also put it a different way. You, quote, find your voice, unquote, when you are able to invent this one character who resembles you, obviously, and probably is more like you than anyone else on earth, but is not the equivalent to you.
