"Rather than, as an actor, I want the audience to like me, I'm going to smile beautifully and I've got everybody's sympathy - what about showing the moments when somebody is unbelievably petty? Or really selfish? The faults, the little things, those are the things that interested me about playing the character."

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I try to discover the character's primary motivation. In a screenplay, you can make up a hundred different variables of a character. Is he there for love or respect, or is he there out of fear? What's he doing? Why is he doing it? Then I can build on the intricacies. Does he pick his fingernails? Does he always do this when he's lying? All the little things that come with it. But it's also like, if you're doing a caricature and you're like, "I want to do a blue-collar guy from Jersey," you have to go and do the research on the region, the who, what and why.

— Kurt Yaeger