A Quote by Joe Carnahan
I think as a filmmaker and as a director, you shortchange yourself if you inhibit the ability of your actor to bring their own personal experiences to the characters.
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I don't think an actor needs to necessarily go through his things to do his job. I think it's way more important to imagine. And then, when you're imagining, your experiences, your images and your own personal things will show up, but you keep imagining. You don't get stuck in your own personal things, otherwise you are telling your story in every character, and that's not interesting for anybody.
A writer can't just be well-educated or good at research; to build a living, breathing world with interesting characters, you have to write from the gut. I'm not saying you have to live your life like a fantasy adventure. The trick is the ability to synthesize your own everyday experiences into your fiction. Infuse your characters with believable emotions and motivations. Infuse your world with rich sensory detail. For that you have to be in touch with your own existence and your own soul, the dark and the light of it.
I believe that you become yourself every single day of your life through your choices and how you think. And that's constantly changing every day... You are constantly changing, evolving through your experiences, how you interpret your experiences, and how you choose to do things in the future based on those experiences... Being yourself means you think with your own mind, and you make your own choices and that makes you you.
That's the most important thing when you're trying to portray a character for the audience to believe, you have to have the ability to journey in uncomfortable areas in your own personal life - to bring them out and make (the characters) true. Michael Landon is incredible at pulling those (emotions) out of you.
By investing others with the power to dictate who you are, you rob yourself of an opportunity to truly grow. You shortchange yourself by devaluing the experiences and knowledge you've banked, all those things that have been making you, you.
I'm an actor's director. I love it when talented actors can bring characters to life.
When there's an actor involved, the actor's talking to the director or the director's talking to the actor. But when there are not those two people interacting, it's all one person in your own mind, you have to be so extra-clear about what you need.
I'd define it as self-awareness: an ability to trust your own judgment. An ability to see through veils of bullshit or spins on stories or propaganda. Maybe an ability to think for yourself.
Your job, as an actor, is never to just do what you're told. That's boring, and life is too short. It's your job to bring something, and it will either be to other people's taste or your own taste, and you have to try things out. Actors say, "Well, as long as the director's happy," but I don't believe that and I don't agree with that. I want the director to be happy, but if I'm not happy, I won't sleep at night.
There are always certain things that you tap into, your own personal experiences, and I try to base my characters on someone I know or someone I've seen.
I think there are things that are based in your own dealings with someone that is a personal dealing, not a public dealing. Because you have personal experiences.
I think your text [script] is everything; it's what informs you; it's what gives you the given circumstances. Then you take that and you add your own creativity and your own spin on things and you make it personal. That's what makes that character and that text unique to you, when you personalize it. I think that's where your job as an actor comes in.
But if you, as an independent filmmaker or a "serious" filmmaker, think you put more love into your characters than the Russo Brothers do Captain America, or Joss Whedon does the Hulk, or I do a talking raccoon, you are simply mistaken.
As an actor, I don't really think you find yourself. I mean, once you find yourself, I think it becomes boring and you become set in your ways. I think, as an actor I think it's not a bad thing but more of a gift. It's something you're always doing as an actor. You're adjusting constantly.
But I did on projects that I produced, that I directed, that I acted in because it was important. I want to be a filmmaker. I don't want to be an actor who directs, I want to be a director. I want to be a filmmaker. So that's a big difference.
As an actor you bring some of your own experiences which can make things easier. You build off of it, but your imagination is always the best thing you have as far as creating things I think specifically for what that character is going through. But you're definitely drawing obviously upon things that you can connect to, and then you kind of mold the change that you're making into something that's right for the character.
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