The wisest and best are repulsive, if they are characterized by repulsive manners. Politeness is an easy virtue, costs little, and has great purchasing power.
I start with an image, then I go from the image toward exploring the situation. Then I write a scene, and from the scene I find the character, from the character I find the larger plot. It's like deductive reasoning - I start with the smaller stuff and work backward.
I believe in method acting. Whenever I'm working on a character, I start behaving like him. I start doing these things which the character would normally do. Maybe that's the way I function as an actor, and I believe in it. And that's how I try and portray a character.
With films it's not usually that I have a particular character I'm looking for; I'll read the character and my imagination will start spinning and I'll go, "Yes, definitely." I'm thinking it would be nice to keep challenging myself.
People who start a sentence with personally (and they're always women) ought to be thrown to the lions. It's a repulsive habit.
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.
It's fun when you start a movie, because it's kind of like you get to go Christmas shopping... you get to make your wish list and you start thinking about what each character needs.
One exercise I always do when I'm getting to know a character is ask her to tell me her secrets. Sit down with a pen and paper, and start with, 'I never told anybody...' and go from there, writing in the voice of your character.
I don't start a song with an idea of what ingredients are going to go into a song. It's not like a recipe. I will normally either talk from personal experience or I'll make a character and then try to allow that character to behave the way he or she naturally would.
I never go into a scene - ever, ever, ever - thinking, I have to make myself more empathetic toward the audience. Once you start doing that, you get into really dangerous territory. I think you start to become kind of untrue to the character.
If you become very self-conscious about what you are doing, you kill. You kill the character. Then it doesn't work. You have to come from a sincere place. And you don't think too much. I don't go to the hotel and I start thinking what am I going to say tomorrow and start writing things down.
When I am writing I don't set a certain number of pages. I do know that the further into a script I get the faster it goes. As soon as you start making decisions you start cutting off all of the other possibilities of things that could happen. So with every decision that you make you are removing a whole bunch of other possibilities of where that story can go or what that character can do. So when I get maybe 2/3's of the way through I can see very clearly where it is going to go.
When you have a movie, you know who they start out as and where they go. But this is constantly changing, and you're growing with the character.
It's really an organic sort of process. You start off with the character on the page. You fall in love with that character and you have to represent that character well and I think it's just an evolution there. Using the accent and speaking the lines with the accent in fact opens the door to who the character really is.
You start at the end, and then go back and write and go that way. Not everyone does, but I do. Some people just sit down at the page and start off. I start from what happened, including the why.
Large parties given to very young children... foster the passions of vanity and envy, and produce a love of dress and display which is very repulsive in the character of a child.