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I get very involved in my characters. Sometimes I have a very hard time separating my characters from my life.

My school of thought with going into a character is that you have to understand where they come from, and you have to empathize with them.

As an actor, I think it's always important to separate yourself from your characters because, when you include yourself in a character, you're taking a liberty that you don't really have unless you're life is that incredibly close to the character.

You can't form a character without being completely comfortable with who you are as a person.

Often you find the character through the things they say. How they talk about other people, how they describe themselves - which is very rare.

I don't think anyone can do any character that doesn't have at least some ounce of themselves in it. You are who you are, and your brain is drawing on things that you've experienced.

I've found in the past that the more closely I identify with the heroine, the less completely she emerges as a person. So from the first novel I've been learning techniques to distance myself from the characters so that they are not me and I don't try to protect them in ways that aren't good for the story.

I think every writer will tell you that their characters are always partially themselves: who I am and what I've experienced. It's always there in part of my characters.

I feel like people assume if a character is very different than you, that means it's difficult to get into their head or into their skin.

There's no point in using someone else's characters if you're going to turn them into your own vision. You have to be loyal to that person's worldview and sensitive to what they would and wouldn't have done with their characters, and how explicit or inexplicit they would've been.