A Quote by Alexander Gould
When you get into a film, it is one story and one set development of a character, and you are able to delve into one character for a short period of time and discover everything about them.
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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 get to know a character that you play on-stage in a pretty profound way over a length of time. I don't want to sound highfalutin and say you become the character, you just start bringing more and more of yourself to the part until the character and actor, it's hard to tell them apart. It's some weird amalgam. In film, because of the period of time, I don't know that you ever get that deep into it.
The best writers are gravitating to that world. What's rewarding also is this: you have a two hour movie, you can't really delve into character that much. In a TV show you can. You can delve into character. You can get into nitty gritty.
Music helps define the character and is an extension of the character somehow, so that you are able to use both the songs themselves and the way that you sing them to tell something about the character and his story, as well as develop a performance style.
And, for any performer, to be able to go deep into character is fantastic. In film you only get to do that if you're the leading character. But in television you get 18 hours to really test the audience and take them to the edge of how far they will go with this character. I can step over this line and I love that.
Everything starts with what's on the page, what a writer has come up with. And whether it is a big studio film or independent film, is the story being well told? Is it interesting? Is the character interesting? And is there something about the character that may stretch me?
For me, the challenge of a period film is that, unlike a contemporary film where the character can be very free-form when it comes to the acting, there's a burden to acting in a period film because you have to stay within the character's historical background and the gestures of certain periods.
So in the drafting process, whenever I would discover something about what my character wanted or didn't want, I immediately just wanted my character to admit to that so I could get to the next, more interesting level in the story.
Pixar's short films convinced Disney that if the company could produce memorable characters within five minutes, then the confidence was there in creating a feature film with those abilities in story and character development.
In novels you're able to occupy character's internal thoughts and it's really hard to do in a film or a TV show. When you're reading a character's thoughts or when it's in first person, you're reading kind of their own story, so you have the opportunity to see what makes that character complex or complicated. And to me that's what the whole point of fiction is.
You wanna do a lot of backstory for your character - as an actor, you wanna research that. But on the show, it's fun to remain in that naive place as you go along, and be able to continue to discover things about your character as the writers come up with them.
Rob Horton, the main character of The Tiger Rising, was a secondary character in an adult short story I wrote, and he wouldn't go away after I'd finished the short story. I couldn't figure out what he wanted, so I wrote to find out.
The thing about acting is even if you get technically more skilled at what you do, every time you begin a film or a play you're terrified. You don't know if you're going to pull it off. Every film and every story has its own set of challenges. I've never felt like, oh yeah, that's it, nailed it! You can never sit and rest. That's why it's such an exciting job. It's beginning again every time you begin again. New story, new character, new place, new time, new director. It's like moving to a different planet and trying to figure out how to live there.
I think every time you take a female character, a black character, a Hispanic character, a gay character, and make that the point of the character, you are minimalizing the character.
It doesn't matter if a character is a lawyer, a cop or a geography teacher. If there's a story in there, where the character has a passion and a fire in his belly and story to tell, then it's enough for an actor to get excited about.
Whenever I read a script or sign a film, I don't see whether he is a bad guy or a good guy. I see how much the character is contributing to the story? How much is the importance of the character in taking the story forward? And what new I would be able to learn and what new I would be able to try in that?
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