A Quote by Giancarlo Esposito

I never like to refer back to anything I've done when I'm working on a character, even if that character has the same occupation. — © Giancarlo Esposito
I never like to refer back to anything I've done when I'm working on a character, even if that character has the same occupation.
Where does a character come from? Because a character, at the end of the day, a character will be the combination of the writing of the character, the voicing of the character, the personality of the character, and what the character looks like.
People say that you want to be varied in your career, and I've done so many things and am very appreciative. But, the one thing I've never done and wanted to do was to be a regular on a TV show, where you get 22 weeks of the year to develop and play a character. I've done arcs of five or eight episodes on shows, but I'd like to have a character that's rich enough and deep enough to want to explore and live with for a few years. Playing the same character, but doing different scenes seems very exciting to me.
One never wants to do anything that's going to break that 'sculpture of the character' that's been done so far, or make anything that's been done so far become illogical in any way, so you always want to try to connect when you're doing a series of films that has a continuous character.
I never like to sit and discuss my character, the other character, our relationship, or anything like that. I feel like if I did my job and I trust that the other person has done theirs, you just go on set, play around with it, chew the scene for a little bit; then we roll, and that's it.
If you think of even Tolstoy or a book like 'Anna Karenina,' you go from character to character, and each section is from the third person perspective of a different character, so you get to see the whole world a little more kaleidoscopically that way. That's traditional narrative manner, and I haven't done a book like that before, but I enjoyed it.
It's going to sound like the easy answer, but I love them both. I do! I really don't prefer one over the other. With movies, you really dive into a character for two to three months, but then it's gone. With a TV series, you have a constant location you're living in, and you're always working on the same character along with people who are like your own family. I'm lucky to have done both.
I've never done coke or anything, and I've never played a character who has, so I don't know whether I would actually try coke if I had to play a character who took coke.
If anything, in the podcast world, I'm relieved that I don't have to dress like the character. I don't necessarily have to do all of the physicality that conveys the character, but do as much as I need to help me feel like the character.
I think I just wanted to run after my dad died, so I ran to Australia. It's only looking back that I think that, though. I never would have done anything like that before; it was so out of character.
If I'm not clear with the character, I can't do anything with it. But once I get that character, the possibilities are endless. When you have such a defined character, I feel like I can actually read the phone book and make it funny.
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.
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.
When you start digging into things like character, though, the notion that people have high character or low character is very strong. What's crazy is that my thinking is not a new insight. The very first large-scale study of character, still one of the largest ever, was done in the early 1900s by Hugh Hartshorne, an ordained minister and a scientist.
I never like to judge the character. I just have to leave my feelings of pity, or fear, about a character - whatever I feel towards the character, I try to leave to one side. It's good to have them, but it doesn't help me. I can't act those things. I just to play the character as truthfully as I can.
What is the character trying to say? Why? Be as specific as you can, using sense images that evoke something about the character. Try using the character's senses, even if the character is you.
If you never fall in love with your character, you'll never be able to do that character justice. No matter who it is, no matter what the character does, you have to find the reason for it. Everyone's got a reason for what they do, even if it's a reason that they're not proud of.
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