As actors, you don't actually need to know the future of the character. You just need to know the backgrounds.
You're living with these characters for years and years, you need to have a lock on who they are as people, what they like, what they don't like, what they experience, and what they go through.
The life of a character doesn't just exist between action and cut.
The way I prepare is through script analysts and back story. I create back story for a character based on script analysts, filling in as many details as possible. I also do a lot of research.
It's very hard to connect with a character when you haven't gotten a sense of who they are.
I loved writing fiction. I mean, once I found the character, or the characters, and knew who they were and knew their back-stories, it really - I mean, I went into my studio every day, thinking, 'What's gonna happen to Billy today?'
The producers felt that 24 would be good for the audience, to really get to know who these 12 and 12 are.
I'm not the kind of actor that would know what my character had for breakfast last Tuesday.
There is nothing like being able to develop a three-dimensional character over a long period of time. Sometimes you aren't able to fully portray a character because you only have a couple of scenes to do it in, and you don't get the full life and background of that character.
You have to start from a place of trying to create a character.
When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.
I do build my own backstory as an actor. It's important to know where your characters have come from in order to know where they're going - in order to exist in that state of being.
A lot of actors talk about doing their homework, but very few of them do it.
Any time you learn something new about your character, that's really exciting.
I believe the most intricate plot won't matter much to readers if they don't care about the characters, especially in a series. So I try to focus hard on making each character, whether villain or hero, have an interesting flaw that readers can relate to.
For 'The Bestseller'... there was hardly any research, but I had to give each person a quirk and develop their stories so that it would relate to who they are.
For me, plot always comes out of character, so I had to be sure of my characters.
The most I could hope for is to come and try and develop a character who is interesting, who is interesting to me, who is interesting to fans and who could contribute to the storytelling that is 'Law & Order: SVU.'
When I was on 'One Life to Live,' I always wanted to delve into my character, Layla, to find out why she was the black sheep of the family. I so wanted to have some edge. I have no idea why there was a reluctance to do that or why we so rarely see it.
If somebody from the past doesn't rise up from the grave and start talking to me, I haven't got a book. I have to hear that voice, the voice of the narrator. How she sounds will tell me who she is, and who she is will tell me how she will act - and that starts the plot in motion.
I'm not a trained actor. I have neither read acting books nor gone to acting school. But I have certain fundamentals on how I approach a character; the basic skeleton of my preparation is based on observations from real life.
When you're building a character, or at least when I'm building a character, you start saying, 'How am I going to make people like him?'
You can really help support a character if you understand the setting. So for that reason I generally write about Philadelphia.
I want to give my characters nuance.
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.
