In playing the part of Mammy, I tried to make her a living, breathing character, the way she appeared to me in the book.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I wanted to create a heroine that was flawed. I wanted her to be a real person. She's selfish, she's childish, she's immature and because I'm doing a three-book arc I really played that up in the first book. I wanted the reader to be annoyed with her at times.
Finally, after a lot of searching and digging, it was simply the love of family that gave me a road into the character. Once I got into that, and we delved into what it would be like to survive cancer and the ability to see how precious life is, it became easier to play her.
I made the character as much of myself as I could.
If I prepare myself for a character, for a role, I always try to understand her.
In a lot of ways, the make-up was the character.
As an actor, secrets and obstacles fuel the character.
When you're portraying someone that really existed, there has to be a time as an actress where you leave reality and move into the fantasy world so you can do your job of creating a character.
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.
When I act, I try to understand the character, why she's behaving like that.
I didn't see my character, Core, as a cannibal but as somebody who is extremely passionate and who doesn't have any conscience. She takes her passion to its complete extreme.