We all had our reservations about possibly overdoing it but, you know, the script was great. Basically it stuck to the formula that worked for the first two movies, and for that reason I think this works as well.
I was writing a script about the Joker menacing a regular person who had strayed into his path, and I needed to give him a gang of henchmen to work with him. The idea occurred to me, let’s put in a female henchperson, because that seemed like a fun variation on the regular big thug guys.
When I was about six or seven, I did this character reenactment performance where I read a monologue from ‘Peter Pan.’ I got into a complete Peter Pan outfit and did a little paragraph from the script – and I ended up winning an award for it.
When I read the script, I was like, Hello, woman in a box. I had to explore that to the end.
You can over-think things. If the script’s good, everything you need is in there. I just try and feel it and do it honestly. I also don’t learn things for auditions, because I feel like it’s just a test of memorising rather than being real.
If you get a script and it’s really well written, that’s always exciting.
To be honest, I never went to school for acting, and I never learned to break down a script. I took acting classes my whole life, but they never taught me anything about acting. They just taught me about myself.
The script was always the most important thing to me and I loved the script. For one thing, I’ve always admired trees. I just worship them. Think what trees have witnessed, what history, such as living through the Civil War, yet they still survive.
I get a script and it’s really interesting with scripts, because you never really know. It’s paper and it could be great or awful. Even scripts that are good could end up not working.
I’ve always been better at informing the audience through images than through words, but I took on a script that was so dialogue-intensive, that the words had to do all the informing.
I love the script and I just thought it was a great role. Like I say, it’s like this – the script is like this sad, funny, desperate love song to the lost American man.
I remember going to Bob Preston’s dressing room because I was losing a laugh – as you do in a long run. He said, ‘Give me the script. That’s where you’re going off the road.’ That’s comedy. It’s never the line itself; it’s in the foundation.
Most of the time when I receive a script, it says something like ‘Rosenberg is the fat, slovenly Mayor, who doesn’t want the kids to use the Skateboard Park’, or ‘Stein is a pompous, rotund attorney, imposing to all.’ It would be so freeing to get a script where my character is simply described as ‘A Man.’
I won’t work on anyone’s else’s script. I won’t write for anyone else. I write my own stuff and make that when the time is right.
The short film project I just finished for W Hotels and Intel, I didn’t have my script finished until a few days before we began filming. We edited it very quickly and now it’s up online. It was great to conceive an idea and have it premiere just a few weeks later, compared to a feature, which takes a year or more.
I think I read films having grown up around the pre-production and post-production aspect of the filmmaking medium, a lot more than most young people who are in acting would have experienced. I do think about scripts in a different way. I can’t just read a script as an actor. I don’t know how to do that.
Chris Columbus, who directed the first two Harry Potter films and was the family comedy king through the ’80s and ’90s – ‘Mrs. Doubtfire,’ ‘Home Alone,’ etc. – has acquired rights to ‘The Cypress House’ and is working on the script himself, with intent to direct.
Often in television, you read a script and you’re amazed that you get the scene given to you.
Simon Monjack had nothing to do with ‘Factory Girl.’ He filed a frivolous lawsuit against us… making bogus claims that we had stolen his script. He held us literally to hostage and we were forced to settle with him as he held our production over a barrel.
Frankly, as much as I love to improvise, it hasn’t been difficult to stick to the script on ‘Mad Men.’ The writing is so precise, and the story so carefully crafted, that I don’t think there’s room – or need – for ad libbing. I could never come up with dialogue as lovely as these writers do, anyway.
I can now tell from the envelope whether or not it is a good script.
The thing that I look for in a script – I’m not looking for anything next because you never know where life’s going to take you, so you can’t just expect, ‘I want to do this next.’ So I’m not expecting anything; I’m just hoping.
I remember the first reading of the script we had and everybody was sitting around the table. I was very impressed with the level of acting that was in the room, particularly with Jennifer who has so much responsibility.
To make the script, you need ideas, and for me a lot of times, a final script is made up of many fragments of ideas that came at different times.
I don’t work very much, and I just sit here waiting for a script that I can’t refuse – and I’m not talking about money.
If I put the script down more than once, there’s a good chance that I probably don’t want to play the part.
Every time I think I’m going to take it slow, a good script comes along.
When I do a movie, I have the script. I know how it begins and how it ends. I know what my character does and where he’s going. If I have ideas I want to express or changes I want to make, there’s one guy: the director. It’s different in television.
For me, it’s always the script. The script which gives me the chance to do something new; that has been my prime objective ever since I started acting. There’s nothing else that excites me more than that.
Lastly get emotionally connected to your story so you can deliver it, you know, if you can’t deliver the emotions to your script there’s no point to your story. Story is the key.
As soon as I saw the script for ‘Moonlight Drawn By Clouds,’ I thought it was fun, and I really wanted to do it.
My solo novel ‘Icons’ was optioned by Alcon Entertainment, the folks who made the ‘Beautiful Creatures’ movie, and that’s gotten as far as a script, but no news yet.
We shot in a place called Asheville, which is like beautiful, beautiful forests. And then part of it we shot all the reaping stuff, which was just crazy – because the reaping in the book and in the script is such an emotional thing for everyone. It really did feel like that when we were shooting it.
You just have to take these opportunities when they come along. They’re not that frequent; you’ll get a really good script, oh, maybe once a year if you’re lucky.
When I choose a script, I ensure that I get to contribute to the film in some way and, in turn, grow as an actor in the process.
I read so slow. If I have a script, I’m going to read it five times slower than any other actor, but I’ll be able to tell you everything in it. It kills me that there are standardized tests geared towards just one kind of child.
Over the years, I have realized that there’s more to a film’s fate than just good acting and a solid script. It needs to be marketed well. It’s the package that sells – the songs, action, actors, etc.
I do remember reading the script of ‘The Nightmare Fair’ and looking forward to doing it.
The script for ‘Infamous’ was so poised between tragedy and comedy. It’s a dream part. One reads those scripts with a sense of melancholia. When you read a script that good… I remember thinking, ‘Oh, this script is too good. They’ll never give it to me.’
When the script for ‘Once’ came my way, I had the thought that maybe it will last only a season. But I was willing to take that risk.
Composers today get a TV script on Friday and have to record on Tuesday. It’s just dreadful to impose on gifted talent and expect decent music under these conditions.
I look at the action scenes as placeholders when I arrive on a script, knowing that I’m going to expand on them when I understand the constraints of the movie, the locations of where we’re shooting, the abilities of the actors, and where we want to go with the characters.
When you first start out as an actor, you’re just looking for a good part. As time goes on, if you’re being held responsible for the movies themselves, you’re looking for a good script all around.
I don’t think I had a script on ‘King Kong.’ But usually you read a script and then you go and audition for it. It’s rare when there’s no script. I sort of like the latter better, because I’m more successful at it.
I started to work on a feature-length script about pirates in Somalia, but I knew that there was something I was missing, which was that I didn’t know what day-to-day life looked like and felt like in East Africa. So I decided I had to go.
Directors are our teachers, and I’m always craving to work with a great director. They’re pretty much the first thing that interests me about a project. Let’s put it this way: It’ll take me a lot longer to read a script if there’s no director attached.
I’m doing a Dylan Thomas film, Map of Love, with Mick Jagger producing again. It’s a wonderful script.
What I look for in a script is something that challenges me, something that breaks new ground, something that allows me to flex my director muscle. You have got to think fast in this business, you’ve got to keep reinventing yourself to stay on top.
