Quotes About Characters

I love Norse mythology - Thor and Odin and Loki - amazing characters.

I love playing villains.

I like to do movies, because I love becoming different characters, and telling different stories through different eyes, and affecting someone's life in one way or another.

Flawed characters... a ticking clock... morally questionable acts on all sides... moody, evocative art... oh yeah, this the stuff crime noir fans love!

I think all the characters in 'American Horror Story,' which is why I love it, are looking for some sense of meaning, and also it's their form of happiness.

People love to talk about how the '70s are the only time they made movies about characters, and adult movies, and complicated people. But in the '80s, they got away with some of those too.

I do love that witches havent really been explored that much. Usually, witches are the little side character... a bad female character that comes in and leaves.

Sometimes I make my life a living hell by writing complex stories with complex characters. But I love it.

I love playing villains. When you're a bad guy, you get to do many real nasty things. It's a lot of fun.

When you have a set of characters, you have to fall in love with them and care about them as each individual character.

The heavy opulence of Dostoevsky's world was where I had lived forever. The gloomy, lightless interiors, the complex ratiocinations of the characters and their burdensome humors, were as familiar to me as loneliness.

Hey, Dopey said when I was finished reading. How come they never mentioned me? I'm the one who found the skeleton. Oh, yeah, Sleepy said in disgust. Your role was really crucial. After all, if it wasn't for you, the guy's skull might still have been intact.

We're the villains you root for in the story.

Stories were so easy to control. Lady Lynx escaped because Zenobia created an escapable situation, and if anything unexpected happened to her characters, Zenobia had a clever plan to get them out of their new fix.

With what characters she had filled this lost stage of emptiness! It was here that she would see the people of her imagination, the fierce figures of her making, as they strolled from corner to corner, brooded like monsters or flew through the air like seraphs with burning wings, or danced, or fought, or laughed, or cried. This was her attic of make-believe, where she would watch her mind's companions advancing or retreating across the dusty floor.

I think part of my reputation has to do with the difficult roles I've played. Actors do tend to get identified with their characters.

Honestly, I understand that as an actor I should be comfortable with playing different characters. I am also not degrading those actors who are part of stories that require intimate scenes, but as an actress, I wouldn't be doing any scene that requires smooching and making out.

Yet as a director, I don't feel you have to identify with your characters as a requirement to make a movie.

It seems like the requirements for my characters are that I have to be either mentally ill or disturbed in some way, or I have to be physically beaten. It's in my contract.

I find that when I play reality-based characters, it is only as fun for me if I have a lot of time to do research. If I don't it just isn't exciting but if I do, it can be fun because I can learn about that person and the world that they live in and I can become somebody else.

I love to have real people of history interact with my fictional characters. History gives me the plot. I research the period meticulously, and then I blend in a romantic and sensual love story to give it balance. The heavier the history, the more romantic the couple must be.

If I get blocked, it is generally because I don't know enough about some aspect of the story or the characters. The answer for this is generally more research, or making more background notes, so the place and person can be more fully realized inside my own mind.

Sometimes I eavesdrop on people. I could rationalize it - oh, this is good anthropological research for characters I'm writing - but it's basically just nosiness. It also helps me gauge where I'm at: Am I normal?

Outlining is not writing. Coming up with ideas is not writing. Researching is not writing. Creating characters is not writing. Only writing is writing.