Adina Porter Quotes

I was raised in New York City and raised in the New York City theater world. My father was a theater director and an acting teacher, and it was not uncommon for me to have long discussions about the method and what the various different processes were to finding a character and exploring character and realizing that character.

Man’s writing has but one true sense, which is that which the Author meant when he writ it.

With any character, I try to focus more on who the character is and how they got to be who they are.

In terms of how I work with actors, having worked so heavily on the script I have a very clear idea of the characters; they are reasonably well illustrated in the script. If you cast it right, to a great degree you can hand it over to the actor and I just make suggestions. I'm not the kind of director who needs or wants to get into too much finessing. Ideally, when you hit the set, you have this conversation, like, 'eh, what did you think?' 'I don't know, what did you think?' 'Why don't we just try it again, make a few physical changes.'

Of course, when you work on a character, you try to understand her. You feel that everything she does has a reason.

My job as an actor is to serve the script. If I'm looking at it as to see what the best character is, then it's not really looking at the big picture.

[T]he judicious reader ought to know what the chief character in any work of the imagination will naturally perform, according to the situation he is thrown into, as well as doth the author himself.

Whether it's a lower or higher budget project, a TV show or a film, the words on the page are the same to me and I approach the work in the same way. My job is to lift the character from the page, whether it's a TV or film script.

People watch me when I get into these characters that I have in my head, so perhaps I should try acting. So I did.

I've always found that it's such an emotional experience, trying to find the good parts of a bad character or the bad parts of a good character, and in the end, most of these qualities are already there inside me.

I usually read a script from an audience perspective first, and then look more closely at the character only.

You really try to work the character out and spend time in the headspace of the character. That's what I did.

I'm determined not to lose my name. It's who I am. It has neither aided my progress nor hampered it. It's just who I am. My character. My make-up. My culture and heritage is a very rich one. So what if it's difficult for people to pronounce? We all learned how to say Schwarzenegger.

For me what was very important was to try to capture the essence that might have existed behind the myth, the human essence of the character.

It seems that the analysis of character is the highest human entertainment. And literature does it, unlike gossip, without mentioning names.

May I ask you what these questions tend?' 'Merely to the illustration of your character,' said she, endeavouring to shake off her gravity. 'I am trying to make it out.' 'And what is your success?' She shook her head. 'I do not get on at all. I hear such different accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly.

After that, all the while Millie was eating the pudding... we both tore Christopher's character to shreds. It was wonderful fun.... He drove everyone mad in Chrestomanci Castle by insisting on silk shirts and exactly the right kind of pajamas. 'And he could get them right anyway by magic,' Millie told me, 'if he wasn't too lazy to learn how.... But the thing that really annoys me is the way he never bothers to learn a person's name. If a person isn't important to him, he always forgets their name.' When Millie said this, I realized that Christopher had never once forgotten my name.

There is tremendous life and personality in a name. It should be at least as agonized over as any character trait.

Must a name mean something?" Alice asked doubtfully. Of course it must," Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh; "my name means the shape I am - and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.

The lesson intended by an author is hardly ever the lesson the world chooses to learn from his book.

But whether thus submissively or not, at least be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.

I remember calling and asking, because I had a few lines that were like, "How could the character have done this?" and I hadn't read the part of the script that said what she [ Cate Blanchett] did, so they put me on the phone with Woody... Allen. I don't know if I could really say "Woody."

If you're dealing with a character that actually exists, there's an awful lot of information there. So, you can put together, from the information, motivations, insecurities, reactions. Where does that seed get born, if you like?... What I do is put that together.

When you have a clear idea of what your character is trying to accomplish, it makes it a lot easier to riff on things.

But some characters in books are really real--Jane Austen's are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not giving one thought to the real facts of marriage.