Character Adaptation Quotes

I love Elektra. I really have a special place in my heart for her. It was very enjoyable for me to discover her and to adapt her for this project and bring myself to this character. So I have a special spot for her.

I have been working up until recently with Neil Simon, who has been adapting the character to me.

I was ecstatic when 'The Walking Dead' came along. Merle Dixon was so perfectly adapted for me.

'The Blacklist' was really right place, right time. I read the script and met with Jon Bokenkamp, John Eisendrath, John Fox and John Davis, and we just hit it off. They understood that I was not so much trying to adapt to television, but adapt a cinematic style to the things that we were gonna do.

We've all read, I'm sure, a Superman book where we didn't really feel like we knew the character. Where the writer, often with the best of intentions, has tried put a personal stamp on the character, whether it be to try and make him more current, or cool, or have a broader appeal, etc.

The varying physical characteristics of the actors may also necessitate changes. Sean Connery is six feet four. Dustin Hoffman isn't.

When men change, maybe Bond will change. But let's wait. I'm not holding my breath.

Playing a positive role on a network television show, it was great. I took it as a responsibility. Poncherello was supposed to be Poncherelli, and then when I got this part I said, 'You know what, this guy isn't going to be Italian-American, he's gonna be Hispanic American.' And they went with it.

As the story unfolded, the cast of characters changed to match it.

We made our Moriarty very different to [Conan] Doyle's. He's Irish, and he brings all his charm, his twinkle and his humor to it while he's also terrifying.

The Carrie in the plot was too much like the Carrie in the book. She smoked, she swore a lot, she was very hard, very cynical. I could never have pulled it off.

It is how you approach the role given to you, and how you relate to that character and then how you adapt and gel into that role which makes you a good actor.

I should have asked for credit - but he has no idea how amazing it is that a character that was written as a boy can be equally written for a girl. It's like you said, just write a character as if it were a man, and then turn it and make it into a woman. It's like, we're human beings, after all.

Each director is different. Clint Eastwood and Chris Nolan are completely different, and I need to adjust to the story and character and the director and just my duty as an actor.

We're creating a different universe with different rules and a different tone and different villains. We were very careful to honor the iconography of Spider-Man, but we wanted to tell it in a new and different way [in the film].

I always change my words in everything I do. I make the language fit, because I know the character from the inside out. Often character actors are not in a position to do that, but I do it. I don't change any cue and I never change anybody else's lines, but I make my own words fit my mouth.

I think that different actors bring different qualities to the Batman character. It's such a wonderful mantle to put on that I think it's a lot of fun for different actors to see how they play it.

Never jeopardize who you are for a role. Now, I'm not saying you should never change for a role, because the fun of being different characters is adapting different nuances and different parts of the character, but never jeopardize your moral compass or anything like that to have a role.

The DCU Constantine has to be the guy we know and love, with his same failings - otherwise what's the point of using him? But as I'm writing him, he's younger and has perhaps been through a bit less than the battered, aging old sod we meet in Vertigo.

We have a whole other division, where we actually literally take the comic book and animate it. Our feeling was that, if this was going to be our show and that it was going to be a brand new show, it has to be more adventures with these characters, in the same way that, through the years, there have been long runs on the comic book series. It's the same characters, with different voices, along the way.

That has been everybody's challenge, above the dancing, the singing, the lines: getting into who these characters would be in 2015. Today's Tin Man is heartfelt, but he wouldn't be soft. Today's Dorothy would be sassy.

My persona is most importantly just to communicate the material in a way that is most funny and meaningful in the moment. It's more like a character that's sculpted for whatever joke needs communicating at the moment.

During my career I've enjoyed re-invigorating and contextualizing classic characters that are relatable to contemporary audiences.

I was a Navy officer writing about Navy problems and I simply stole this lovely Army nurse and popped her into a Navy uniform, where she has done very well for herself.

Changes can be made. New decisions can be made. If people say, 'It's not like that in the comics!' Well, comic books reinvent their characters a lot. They do different things with them all the time. They're always changing, always keeping things fresh. So that shouldn't be an issue if the race changes for a character.