The recent controversy over the portrayal of Ken Taylor and his embassy staff in the movie 'Argo' brought home to me the great responsibility we writers have when telling stories that involve real people.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Whenever you're telling a story about true-life events and about real people, there's a tremendous responsibility-slash-burden to get it right.
I think that's why I'm an actor: so I can tell those stories without having to really live through those stories with real consequences and real stakes, real responsibility.
I've done a number of things based on real people or true stories or based on books, and I'm a great believer that you have to be true to the script.
Stories, as we're taught in journalism school early on, are told through people. Those stories make our documentaries powerful. You can explore someone's culture, you can explore their experience, you can explore an issue through human beings who are going through it.
As a journalist, as a screenwriter and as a director, I'm trying to tell compelling and truthful stories.
In this film George presents issues that are important, essential and vital, whoever you are, about constitutional rights and the bedrock of a democracy. I am drawn to those kinds of stories because they inspire me - they are responsible to a populace and responsible to man.
I create fictional narratives, but it's based on literal people.
There's a problem with narratives. Most that spring to mind are fictional.
I've found I can plunge the characters into whatever absurd, awful situation, and readers will follow as long as the writer makes them seem like 'real people.'
I feel like my responsibility as an actor is to make characters as compelling and believable as possible.