Character Discovery Quotes

Acting is a very personal process. It has to do with expressing your own personality, and discovering the character you're playing through your own experience - so we're all different.

The character and history of each child may be a new and poetic experience to the parent, if he will let it.

I know some things when I start. I know, let's say, that the play is going to be a 1970s or a 1930s play, and it's going to be about a piano, but that's it. I slowly discover who the characters are as I go along.

Any time you learn something new about your character, that's really exciting.

Theater is all about the rehearsal process. In fact, I think a lot of times opening night there's a mixed sadness because you're finished with a lot of people's favorite part of the process, which is finding the character and discovering it, and then you get to live it.

I think, in the initial process of discovering a character and the analytical process - and this is what I did take from Buddhism - initially I think there has to be an analytical, intellectual approach. And that has to be abandoned by the time you're playing the game.

Acting is different from mental gymnastics. You try to discover as much about the character as you can, but a large area is mysterious.

I love playing Blair Cramer, and I'm thrilled to see what more they have in store for her. After playing this role for so many years, I still feel like there is so much about her that is still untold.

Characters are not created by writers. They pre-exist and have to be found.

What attracts me to material are characters that I know - characters that I know people don't know but I know - and bringing them to the screen. Spotlighting voices that have not been heard before on screen.

We have a writing process that's very much you try to create the character in a complicated way and then you let the story lead you to discovering who the character is in a natural way.

Every character, for me, is a new discovery.

I myself, as I'm writing, don't know who did it. The readers and I are on the same ground. When I start to write a story, I don't know the conclusion at all and I don't know what's going to happen next. If there is a murder case as the first thing, I don't know who the killer is. I write the book because I would like to find out. If I know who the killer is, there's no purpose to writing the story.

There are so many different ways to develop a character - physically, mentally, spiritually and all of that - but the research was really beautiful. I love the process of finding characters because, in the beginning, it's really unknown, and then, by the end of it, all of a sudden, you're walking and talking like that character.

One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then

I don't know quite how a story develops in my head. It is a bit chaotic. If I am working on a series, one of the main characters at least is already in existence as well as some setting and minor characters. Finding the other main character can be a challenge. Sometimes this character already exists in a minor role in another book.

In '7th Heaven,' more than 'Teen Wolf,' was that I got to learn more about my character. In 'Teen Wolf,' I'd always get a new arc for that character every season, which was discovery for me.

I do novels a bit backward. I look for a situation, a milieu first, and then I wait to see who walks into it.

There is always that thought that you might get stuck with a character. But there's always the notion that every character is always evolving.

I have discovered I cannot dream up characters as incredible as the ones I meet in the wilderness.

I think people do get better as the movies go on sometimes, and I'm always happy that we're shooting out of order, so it's kind of scattered throughout the movie, and there isn't like a clear build in everyone finding their characters.

When people come in the door and they have something, discovering and exploring the character is a real joy.

It's always nice to do the flashbacks. That's what's so great about 'Scandal' is that we get to do flashbacks and then keep figuring out and discovering more things about our characters that make them fuller.

A lot of times, when you're acting, you have to explain things to the audience, and it's boring work to do that. It's really hard to make that interesting. I like the discovery of characters. I think people are smart. Audiences are intelligent and can figure things out by just watching behaviors.

As I write each new Thorne novel, I'm determined that whatever is happening plot-wise, a new layer of the onion will be peeled away and reveal something about Thorne that is surprising to me as much as anyone else. If I can remain interested in the character, then hopefully the reader will stay interested, too.