You have to find ways to relate to the characters you get to play. Put it in terms and in a context that speaks to you.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
You rely on a lot of things about learning to play a particular character.
You want to be honest with a character and play it truthfully, and you want to be genuine with your character.
You jot down ideas, memories, whatever, concerning your real life that somehow parallels the character you're playing, and you incorporate that in your scene work.
You've got to internalize the character. You've got to learn the words. These are separate things, but they work together.
I don't really try to judge any character that I play, afterwards I figure it out, but while I'm working on the character, I have to find something in them to relate to.
In every character you play, as much as you hate to admit it as an actor, but there's an element of you that you bring to it. Either the character helps you discover that element of you or the other way around, where that element of you helps you discover the character.
I think that you can sort of have your own personal journey and you know, you can just kind of apply that to whatever characters you're playing.
Every so often you read a play and a character just speaks to you - almost seems to speak through you, in fact.
It's obvious that if you're going to play a character you need to amass information about that person and about their environment or their era that they're in and use as little or as much as necessary.
You just play what a writer writes, in terms of what a character chooses to do and how a character chooses to deal with their various relationships.