Here are some quotes pulled from my older posts Writing Actor Bait (2012) and Writing for Movie Stars (2010):
“Producers and directors buy a property because they like the story. Actors buy it because they see themselves in a part. ”
Jerry Lewis
The Total Film-Maker
“If you want to attach a star, then you really need to have a great protagonist. A protagonist who is really active, who is really initiating the action of the movie, who’s responsible for the forward momentum of the narrative. And perhaps there’s a transformational arc there, because that’s what actors want to play. They don’t necessarily want to play the same note through the whole movie, so it’s about exploring those layers and really creating an emotional resonance to the character. Because, remember, we experience the story through the characters and because we really care about their experience and what it is that their journey entails—that’s where the emotional element is going to be.”
WME Story Editor Christopher Lockhart
Script magazine, January/February 2012
“Who wouldn’t want to play Hans Gruber, Norma Rae Webster, Hannibal Lecter, Ellen Ripley, or Gordon Gekko?”
Jeffrey Hirschberg
11 Laws of Great Stroytelling
“Movie stars like to play complex, fascinating characters with interesting moral dilemmas. It does’t matter whether you create a completely original character, negotiate the life story rights of a living character based on a true story, or portray a larger-than-life historical figure: Make your character big, complex and fascinating!”
Kate Wright
Screenwriting is Storytelling
P.S. Because I like to curate quotes, if you have some others that line up with these shoot them my way. Ideally, I’d like to have 10 quotes on writing castable characters.