Janet McTeer Quotes

Developing characters is a strange thing. In the beginning they are abstract and I wonder how to move on from there.

What I'm really trying to do is create unique characters.

Often the starting point for characters, for me, is finding a little, most minor detail, and I'll go from there.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

I usually start with a repulsive character and go on from there.

A character who is thought-out is not born, he or she is contrived. A born character is round, a thought-out character is flat.

I like to take a character and develop it.

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

I love creating new characters that are whatever they are.

You have to start from a place of trying to create a character.

Stories are important, but I'm really into characters, and if you can give birth to a good one, that's true success.

I take little bits and pieces of ideas that I may or may not believe in but I give them to this character and he runs with them. I have fun with however he handles the situation.

I mean, can I really create a full, three-dimensional character? I don't know anymore. I'm certainly going to try.

The thing with videogame characters is that they tend to be really undercooked, and people don't take the time to really flesh them out. They don't treat them with the respect that a writer writing characters in any other medium would treat their character.

What makes characters real are details, and if you're crafting a person from scratch, you're probably not going to pay as much attention to a question like, 'Does this person bite their nails?'

If you give a character room to breathe, they come alive.

When I create a character, it happens in layers. The more I write and revise, the better I understand the characters.

I try to build a full personality for each of our cartoon characters - to make them personalities.

I don't tend to cast roles in my head because I spend so much time with these characters and the drawings that they're complete in themselves, you know what I mean?

I think sometimes actors are drawn to good television because you have more time to sell it, you have more time to shape a character, and to tell a story, and that's really appealing.

I try to create characters that I am fascinated by on some level or intrigued by or can't stand.

You invent this massive lagoon of information without any pressure to do anything apart from create this person, a person that might fit the bill that is the character that is emerging from the research.

I think I try to look at all my films and break them down because, at the end of the day, it's about creating characters that you like.

I want to give every single character the dimensions and complexity of a main character.

Whenever you have a role where you don't get to know anything about the character, you have to invent it yourself. You have to feel like it came from somewhere.