Character Observation Quotes

If I get the walk of a character, that helps me find them. So I'm constantly looking at airports and train stations, registering walks.

What makes characters so interesting when you're an actor or a dancer is to watch and observe how people walk and move and speak. Are they cat-like? Are they walrus-like? Why does that person bother me, and why do I think they are the way they are?

When I'm writing, I try to have the mask of my character on as I'm walking through the world. When I'm not at my desk, the rest of the time, I try to stay in that character and see the world the way that character would It's almost like method acting in a way — keeping the character close the way the actor keeps a script close and always tries to be in character.

Whenever I work on a part, I look at the world through the filter of the character and I pick things they might use through my observations of real life.

What is extraordinary about the character of Edna - and I speak as though I am completely outside this character and I am talking to you - I'm, as it were, in the wings, and she's on stage, and every now and then she says something extremely funny, and I stand there and think: 'I wish I'd thought of that.'

You learn different things through fiction. Historians are always making a plot about how certain things came to happen. Whereas a novelist looks at tiny little things and builds up a sort of map, like a painting, so that you see the shapes of things.

Mr. Pickwick took a seat and the paper, but instead of reading the latter, peeped over the top of it, and took a survey of the man of business, who was an elderly, pimply-faced, vegetable-diet sort of man, in a black coat, dark mixture trousers, and small black gaiters; a kind of being who seemed to be an essential part of the desk at which he was writing, and to have as much thought or sentiment.

Don't think about how your characters sound, but how they see. Watch the world through their eyes - study the extraordinary and the mundane through their particular perspective. Walk around the block with them, stroll the rooms they live in, figure out what objects on the cluttered dining room table they would inevitably stare at the longest, and then learn why.

When I'm writing, I try to have the mask of my character on as I'm walking through the world.

If you watch Olivier's interviews, he has this reptilian tongue; it seems too big for his mouth. My pursuit of that became distracting, so I let it go. The thrill was finding the right pair of glasses.

I can see the character in a photograph, in the way a guy stands or holds his hands, the way he buckles his belt. I fantasize a lot looking at photographs. I'm sure that doesn't work for many people.

I'm very interested in people, so if a character happens to be real, there's that much more to look at.

Brayden met my eyes. His were hazel, almost like Eddie’s but with a little green. Not as much green as Adrian’s, of course. No one’s eyes were that amazingly green.

I don't love comedy but I can watch someone who's kind of interesting forever. I think a waitress who's having a bad day is a lot more fun than Robin Williams doing forty minutes of material.

I enjoy sometimes focusing on a character in a scene that's not actually doing the main action or the talking.

I call it an ensemble cast or the world of 'Gulabo Sitabo' which is about the lifestyle of my characters. I just go and sit there in a corner and observe these characters through my camera. That's how I shot the film.

I never thought of myself as explaining cats in general. I simply viewed the cats I have known as characters in my life, often as quirky and complex as the humans with whom I have spent time.