Quotes About Characterization

I think it's important to play real people.

It's always good to be able to identify with the characters that you're watching and not just easily put them in the bad box or the good box. They're real people that you care about, and you invest in their journey.

I don't base any character on a real person, and really don't do composites either. I make them up.

None of the characters I played was very close to me as a real person.

Playing a real person, it does add an extra level of thoughtfulness. You're portraying someone who actually existed, so instead of saying, like, 'OK, I think this would make the scene better,' it's more a question of, 'What do I think the real Jeffrey Dahmer would do?'

I'm not good at dialogue. I'm not good at holding a mirror up at a real world. I'm not good at believable characterisation.

For me that's the magic of the printed page - we don't have to pay attention to the passage of time and focus in on the realities of these characters at a specific age or at a specific time in their lives, and we can play with that to our hearts' content.

I try to begin with a strong grasp of my characters. Even if it's schematic, I need it clear in my head who these people are.

To ground a character in reality, you have to use shades of gray.

You always have to create the character from the ground up.

I guess it's flattering that everyone believed I was those characters, but it also is dehumanizing.

Tom's contemptuous conception of a girl included the attribute of being unfit to walk in dirty places.

What I think is wonderful is that women are not just avengers or victims in films. They are people. They are characters. It's so refreshing. They're playing different kinds of characters, and they aren't being typecast.

Characterisation is more important to me than the script. A decent story and extraordinary characters can do wonders for a film, but you cannot do it the other way around.

You'll work hard to create characters that are compelling and unforgettable. But in the end, it's the story that matters.

In 'Boyz N the Hood,' every female character was three-dimensional.

I continue to be known as a guy that plays really complex, three-dimensional characters.

The beauty of 'The Hunger Games' and also 'Game of Thrones,' in fairness, both projects have really complex, three-dimensional, contradictory, strong women... The writing of female characters is extraordinary and equal to the men.

Whenever I do something, particularly if it's a cameo, I make sure that I have a backstory written out so that I can talk to the director intelligent and try to communicate a three-dimensional character.

A novel can do something that films and TV usually can't - a glimpse inside the characters' heads. I write very tight third person point of view, so the reader is right behind the eyes of each character, seeing what they see and feeling what they feel.

Dickens's final book, 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood,' forms the jumping-off point for my new novel, 'The Last Dickens'. This last work by Dickens has very little social commentary and a pretty tightly efficient storyline and cast of characters. Not necessarily what we think of when we think what characterizes Dickens.

It is not that female characters in the modern novel are characterizations of bad or limited people—although, incidentally, they almost always are—but that they are badly drawn, because the writers flatly refuse to apply the same complex of literary artifice in their character realizations to both males and females—out of habits that begin as a response to some terror that human individuation would make the female characters equal to the males.

All men fall under 5 categories: The assholes are by far the worst. Then there are the dumbasses, the smartasses, the sorryasses, and last but not least, the wiseasses

Like most little girls, I found the lure of grown-up accessories astonishing - lipstick, perfume, hats and gloves. When I write female characters in my historical novels, getting these details right is vital.