Quote

I have always been drawn to coming-of-age stories and books and movies featuring compelling young characters.

To me, characters are at the heart of great literature.

It's an interesting opportunity to do a long-form character and really have the time to find the nuance over an extended period of time. You can really dig deep.

Adult characters are all the things they've encountered over time. But kids haven't accumulated all the life experience, all the regrets. They tend to be more in the moment, more willing to play, to be joyful.

Especially when you play a character for so many years, the character ends up reflecting a lot of who you are and I think I've changed a lot since then, but that represented a lot of who I was as a teenager.

Character roles definitely age better than your ingenues. You don't get to keep doing that.

We're past the age of heroes and hero kings... Most of our lives are basically mundane and dull, and it's up to the writer to find ways to make them interesting.

If you change a character too much, the audience falls out of love with the character, but characters need to evolve and grow over the years.

It's important to find characters that share sympathy with a young audience, not just in the story but their role in the world.

People become more interesting from about 25 - they develop character and their personalities come out.