A Quote by Kerry Washington

I come from film, where I only play a character for three months at a time, and then it's done, so it's important for me to be able to put on other hats and make sure that all of the tools in my toolbox that don't apply to Olivia Pope are still in shape.
I would never make up a character who didn't exist or an event that didn't transpire. If you're a real writer, you have other tools in your toolbox to build drama.
When you do a normal film, you play the character for three months and you say goodbye to him. And then, when you watch the movie, you say, "I wish I could have done that differently. I wish I could have added this to it."
Losing is inevitable, make sure you have the tools in your toolbox to deal with it.
I would quite like to do a different accent or play something so different from myself because Olivia, the character I play in this film, is similar to me.
I need to be able to write a poem after every film and to kind of cleanse myself from the character because for about three months or so, I'm constantly living through the character's eyes.
I personally am happy doing a finite series as I can't play a single character for three years. Hats off to the actors who stay in a character for three four years and enjoy every moment of their character.
You make sure that there's a structure that's interesting for them to play on top of, then do temp versions and try it on the film. By the time the players come to the recording session, I've found what works. So I'm not wasting their time.
I think a lot of people go into filmmaking thinking, "How can I make a career?" And so when they make their first film, they make it thinking, "Well, this'll be the one that gets me to the place where I can make the second film the way I want to make it, and that'll get me to the place where I can make $100 million on the third film." And I thought, "Well, if I put sustainability at the bottom of my priority list, then what opportunities is that going to free me up to pursue?" And that's what I've always done.
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.
I wanted to make sure the focus [in The Land] was on human beings themselves and their decisions, but still connected to the urban environment that people associate as being black. I think I was able to make a film without commenting on "black this or black that" and you still feel the presence of it. There's no one character who's saying "we're all black and we're all in this struggle." It's that you just feel it. Some of that is because we get the sense from a lot of independent films that black people struggle all the time.
Film is an avenue that I really want to explore more. I’ve learned that my personality is quite impulsive and spontaneous, so the idea that I could play a character for six months and then play something else immediately after is really appealing to me.
If you need to get in physical shape for a film and you have to maintain that for six months, at the start of the film, I was never able to do it.
Sometimes when you make a film you can go away for three months and then come back and live your life. But this struck a much deeper chord. I don't have the ability yet to speak about it in an objective.
I happened to be in a position in Superior where I could play three sports, and when I came to Minnesota, I had the understanding they would allow me to play three sports. Kids now don't have the same amount of time. You have coaches that think baseball is 10 months a year. Hockey is 11 or 12 months a year.
People forget that it's an acting assignment. You can work with someone for three months, three years or 30 years, and then you move on. I've done I don't know how many films, and I can look at the film and know that I worked with Clint Eastwood, but I'm not still trying to hang out with Clint Eastwood. We did our jobs.
Let's put it this way, when I was casting, I cast Viggo first and then found someone who could play his wife, rather than the other way around. So for me he's still the lead character.
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