It's one thing to play a character that's fictitious - it's quite another to play somebody that is alive and well.
Saroj Kumar is a fictitious character who is free to think anything.
You always start a fight scene or an action scene with, 'What are we learning about this character at the moment, and how are we gonna arc him or her in the next three minutes,' and it's no different with 'Deadpool' or 'Atomic Blonde' or 'John Wick.'
With film roles, it just has to be a character either I haven't done before, or a role with somebody really interesting or with an interesting person or group of people.
I come from the theater, and I've done a lot of character work in the theater, but Hollywood stuff in film and TV, they've been more leading lady/ingenue type roles.
I spent lunchtime in a grave during the filming of 'Bloody Mama.' When you're younger, you feel that's what you need to do to help you stay in character. When you get older, you become more confident and less intense about it - and you can achieve the same effect.
When I was filming, I imagined that Legolas was a meditative character who was very thoughtful and had a certain amount of depth to him. I started working on trying to find this focus that Legolas has, which wasn't really like me.
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.
My character on 'The Sopranos' was specific to being a single mother and being from Jersey. And being part of that season finale... wow. That show is always going to be world-renowned and iconic.
When you're telling a story, the best stories, every character has an arc. Every one. And that arc is usually about finding yourself, or about at least finding something about yourself that you didn't know.
It is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly, that one fine day you discover to your surprise that you have rendered something in its true character.
He has the common feeling of his profession. He enjoys a statement twice as much if it appears in fine print, and anything that turns up in a footnote... takes on the character of divine revelation.
Character isn't something you were born with and can't change, like your fingerprints. It's something you weren't born with and must take responsibility for forming.
You can say your lines a million different ways and play your character a million different ways and still hit the common, agreed-upon finish line.
I look at whatever the finish line is for the character and then kind of act backwards from that and play him in such a way so that that finish line is more rewarding.
People without firmness of character love to make up a fate for themselves; that relieves them of the necessity of having their own will and of taking responsibility for themselves.
For me it's always about first impressions. I trust my instincts. I love to prepare if it's something that requires training. But I don't like to prepare the psychology too much. I enjoy the psychology of the character but I work better from a first impression.
On the sequel, you've lost the element of surprise. Usually, on the first one you may not go very, very deep into character; the second one you start to explore the character a bit more.
At times it's been weird because for the first phase of my career, I've been really well-known for a character that I was so not like and a character I never anticipated doing.
There are certain things in 'Twilight'... As much as I'm proud of that movie and I do like it, I feel like maybe I brought too much of myself to the character. I feel like I really know Bella now. But most readers feel like they know Bella because it's a first-person narrative.
