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.
I don't have any complex plans for playing a character. I think all I try to do is not make too many bad guy faces and not ever try to seem too good. I just try to put it in the middle somewhere.
For me, what makes great actors, always is how truthful they are to the character and the story and the emotion that they're trying to tell.
To tell you the truth, I don't ever talk about characters as separate from myself.
If you look at a character as a mountain over there that you have to climb, then I think you've lost 50 percent of the air.
As most characters are that I play, there's a lot of me in it, anyway.
I know it's boring to say this but I always start with the script. I mean if it's well written and it's a character that I haven't necessarily played before.
Every character I play is me, always has been.
Usually with film writing I start with characters, and set about writing their story.
The independent film business is pretty much gone. Now you can do it in a format where you actually get to develop a character over a period of time.
I think that's the big difference between this one [Ordinary World] and a lot of the other rock 'n' roll movies. They're playing to tape, but Fred Armisen and I were actually in a rock 'n' roll bad together. I also really related to the character, especially when it came to the parenting part. I'm a pretty klutzy parent.
I threw a big-ass party. It turned out a bit different from Perry's [in That's Ordinary World], but it was pretty nuts. It wasn't me that threw it though, my wife threw me a surprise party. So [unlike Selma Blair's character] she didn't forget.
If you've got more ambiguous characters or stock stereotypes, the plastic comes through and they don't work as well.
I'm pulling out different aspects of my personality in writing each character and, if I'm doing my job well, I'm being true to the situation and true to the character.
What I try to do in writing any character is to put myself in his position.
The syndicates take the strip and sell it to newspapers and split the income with the cartoonists. Syndicates are essentially agents. Now, can you imagine a novelist giving his literary agent the ownership of his characters and all reprint, television, and movie rights before the agent takes the manuscript to a publisher? Obviously, an author would have to be a raving lunatic to agree to such a deal, but virtually every cartoonist does exactly that when a syndicate demands ownership before agreeing to sell the strip to newspapers.
If you have the personalities down, you understand them and identify with them; you can stick them in any situation and have a pretty good idea of how they're going to respond. Then it's just a matter of sanding and polishing up the jokes. But if you've got more ambiguous characters or stock stereotypes, the plastic comes through and they don't work as well. These two characters clicked for me almost immediately and I feel very comfortable working with them.
A nation has character only when it is free.
I have always had the deepest respect for Bill Nicholson as a person and as a manager. The Spurs boss is an honest Yorkshireman and you will go a long way before finding a straighter character than that. Bill has never wavered in his determination to give White Hart Lane fans the best.
A good filmmaker is someone who can look at a piece and go, "This camera's really going to be a character. I want people to feel like they're being punched."
If you are supposed to be villainous and have some sort of agenda, I like the idea of delivering that kind of character in a perfectly well-mannered way.
Just because your tattoo has Chinese characters in it doesn't make you spiritual. It's right above the crack of your ass, and it translate to beef with broccoli. The last time you did anything spiritual, you were praying to God you weren't pregnant. You're not spiritual. You're just high.
My first character was Mr. Toad.
For me, someone like the Eddie Murphy character doesn't live anywhere; he lives on a stage and when he's not on the stage he's on a bus getting to the next stage. You don't really want to see him at home, or all those things you can do in the movie.
Walt Disney said everything he had ever accomplished was a result of Mickey Mouse. Mickey was Walt's alter ego and he was originally modeled after Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp character. So without Chaplin, who knows what Mickey would have become!
