A Quote by Joe Morton
The advice that I usually give to young actors is that if you can create a character for the stage and keep that character fresh for at least 6 months that means you're doing the show eight times a week.
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If you can keep a character fresh and alive for, let's say, six months, working eight nights a week, then you can do anything. You have honed your technique and your skills to such a degree by that point that you are ready to take on all kinds of challenges.
As a young actor, I was advised to bide my time. Back then, there weren't good roles for someone like me. There were handsome leading men and character actors for smaller supporting roles. But I was told to hang in there, and it was good advice. We're all character actors now. Even a handsome man is a character actor at my age.
With movies, you come and go as an actor, especially if you are not the lead, from week to week. You don't really have a lot of time to get to know anyone, and then on to the next thing. I know a lot of actors who find fulfillment in playing an entirely new character. I like to stick with one character and create a family with the people around me.
I think my biggest problem, though, at least in drafts, is not repeating myself. After eight books I get worried that a character or piece of dialog might be too much like something I've already done. So it's a challenge to keep it fresh.
There is a difference when you work with actors who have worked on the stage. When we're out there in front of an audience eight times a week, you can't do it on your own.
My advice to young actors is probably to do some theatre; definitely do that. I keep running into these actors who have never been on stage, and it's invaluable for an actor. What you will learn about yourself is huge.
I ended up breaking with my boyfriend, and a week later, Neil and I had a date. We started hanging out every single night, and after three months, it was just non-stop. We talk on the phone at least eight times a day and text at least 25 times a day. He's my lifeline in an amazing way. Without him, I can't breathe.
I just didn't want to get bored playing a character, and that's kind of the benefit of doing films; you've lived with a character for four or five months and that's it, and you walk away from that character and you feel like you told a story.
My schedule is completely different doing a play than it is doing a movie, and I actually think it's a much harder schedule because you've got to do it eight times a week and you've got to do it good eight times a week and with different kinds of audiences who are cold or drunk or tired, whatever it is.
Stage is so important because it teaches me how to convey character with words - how to convey how a character reacts by the way they appear on stage. I can usually tell a playwright from someone who has never written for the stage. Did the character work? Did the dialogue reveal who the character is?
I've been in leadership roles on Broadway, and it's one thing to lead a Broadway company - you're with those people for a year straight, and you're doing that same show, eight shows a week. It's quite another when you carry on the story... You go beyond that, and you ride the wave of a character.
We shouldn't confuse singers and performers with actors. Actors will say, "My character this, and my character that." Like beating a dead horse. Who cares about the character? Just get up and act. You don't have to explain it to me.
It's a challenge of to write a narrator who is doing something that is really unlikeable and morally questionable. A lot of times, you read a book because you like the character, you are cheering for the character; you want the best for the character.
Any character that you come up with or create is a piece of you. You're putting yourself into that character, but there's the guise of the character. So there's a certain amount of safety in the character, where you feel more safe being the character than you do being just you
I love what I do. And in the true sense, from my training, I try to create a character each time. It is something I do. But I don't want that term to limit what I can do. I prefer people to say to me, 'You're one of my favorite actors,' rather than 'You're one of my favorite character actors.' It sounds like a slam.
There were episodes where I would wear seven or eight outfits. It took a lot of time to get those together. What the character wears is very essential to how I create the character.
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