role creation Quotes

I knew how to act and had studied acting and enjoyed it, but I'd never pushed myself to really perform as an actor, and create a role, and have the whole character's backstory.

Instead of going to a GLAAD event and standing on a soapbox, I am writing roles that I feel will change the narrative and open doors.

Women are responsible for creating their own roles.

I think being an actor makes me a better writer and vice versa. I know the kinds of roles I would kill to play, and I try to create them for others.

I was with Brian De Palma at the time, and he said he wrote the role specifically for me. I don't know what that says about the way he saw me, since the role was of a castrating killer. Brian came one morning to the house, said "Here's your Christmas present." He wrote the character to have a Swedish accent, but since I couldn't pull that off, he switched it to French-Canadian. It was such a romantic time in my life. Everyone was young and passionate and convinced they were going to change film forever.

I am learning to understand rather than immediately judge or to be judged. I cannot blindly follow the crowd and accept their approach. I will not allow myself to indulge in the usual manipulating game of role creation. Fortunately for me, my self-knowled

I live in New York, and Clara lives in Recife. The character is Brazilian, and as I read the script, I felt like Kleber [Mendonca] had been spying on me in order to create this role [in Aquarius]. Clara and I have different backgrounds. I come from an intuitive world, and she's an academic, but when we got together, we really became one. There are many times when I'm watching the film where Clara will say something, and I will find myself agreeing with her. It was the first time that I had this weird sensation that the character I played is so me, but yet it's so her.

It was seriously just a name. They didn’t tell you what to do. They didn’t tell you how they wanted the character to be - nothing. You went in to audition for this character name and that was it. When I started, before I came onto the set, I went to Gene Roddenberry and said: hey, what do you want from this guy? Who is he? And being as smart as he is, he said: don’t listen to what you’ve heard or read or seen in the past, nothing. Just make the character your own. And that’s what I did.

One thing I like about trying to write is that I can possibly write myself a role. Otherwise, you're at the mercy of whatever roles are out there that people are willing to give to you.

You have to get out of your comfort zone in order to grow. And as an actor, you don't become Meryl Streep by doing the same type of comedy. You get there by being challenged. And unfortunately, there's a lack of roles for women of color, so you actually have to be the engineer creating some of those roles.

I do work with a lot of women in my company, and I write a lot of roles for women over 40. I think, in 'Feud' alone, we have 15 roles for women over 40, which I'm very proud about.

I knew at the time that that wasn't the part I would be doing, they just wanted a screentest so they could have a look at it to show to the directors and producers. Then they wrote a part for me or maybe they already had it in mind, I don't know.

I think my experience as an actor helps me to write anything. It certainly helped me to write 'August Osage County.' It helps me to write any play that I'm working on because I think one of the things I do well is write good roles for actors.

The attitude of the actor is his interpretation of what he reads, and the written word is what creates the role in the actor's mind, and I guess in reading the things that were given to me, I reacted as you guys saw me, you know.

If there aren't roles you want to play, then you've kind of got to create them.

I think finding a character starts in hair and makeup, fitting room. That's where it all kind of falls into place.

Creating a role is an interesting thing - each show or each situation is different.

Being an actor/ writer is a responsibility and a burden and a gift. The responsibility to me is that you can't just wait to be cast into something and then you create the role. You almost have a voice inside of you telling you what you might want to play and be able to play. It's hard, but once that thing comes out of the printer and you hold those warm pages to your cheek it's great. It's a huge sense of accomplishment.

I really am a character actor, in my heart of hearts, because I really do like developing characters and painting a past for them.

When you're creating new roles out of scratch in my opinion working with the actors is a great asset. You can learn a lot from that.

I spent 15 years of not being able to get a job creating a role on Broadway.

The First Lady role is really difficult. It has no job description... You have to create it for yourself.

I will see 100 or 200 and I will take my time with them and I audition them for the two main roles. If I like what I see, but they're not exactly right for the role, I'll think well I have this other role that might work for them. Sometimes I will write a role for them because I want to work with them because they're so good.

With 'Nip/Tuck,' I had never even done anything before I got on that show. They created that character for me. I was reading for something else.

You start out with scripts pre-written, with no specific actor in mind, so you've got to build a character on top of that foundation. It's not just lifting words off the page, it's constructing a history around them as well.