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Character is one of most precious parts of you. You can't get involved in things that will damage your character.

Sometimes I think people get into trouble because they can't say what they want to.

I think the great thing about characters is the ways that they can be surprising. I mean, sometimes you think you've got a lock on a personality, even just in life, and then they'll shock you by their behavior.

In real life, we do things out of character, constantly. A couple of days ago, my shoes were hurting, so I walked barefoot through New York. Someone who has known me my whole life would think that was so out of character. But I did it because of the circumstances.

When I know what the character I'm supposed to play wants in general terms, and when I know what did the other characters want to do, that's when all these wills collide and the emotions show up.

At the heart of any drama, there's conflict. When you are acting, you get to play out the confrontations you want to have in real life but can't. Or the emotions that you would want to have in real life, but sometimes they are too difficult.

In particular, people have trouble understanding where I stand in relation to my characters, and very often this gets reduced to me making vicious fun of them.

Yeah, I've always been accused of having a sense of mischief and I'm very flattered that you say you can see it in the roles I play, because I think that's important, even if I do play intense characters, like especially Christine Cagney.

I mean, I do whatever I need to do to get into character. Sometimes it's being incredibly quiet, and sometimes it's being loose and goofy.