The pleasure from acting comes from having great writing to work with. If it's well written and the character is interesting, then, as an actor, that's the raw material I need.
I think the tradition of well-written history hasn't been squashed out of the academic world as much in Britain as it has in the United States.
It's funny: the reason I did 'Beautiful Creatures' was the same reason I did everything else - even though it was a genre film and existed at a more studio level, the script and the characters were so well written.
The scripts of 'The Wire' are fantastic - the scripts of 'Breaking Bad,' the scripts of 'Mad Men,' the scripts of 'The Sopranos,' the scripts of 'Battlestar Galactica.' You could keep going on. They're incredibly well written.
What I learned from doing 'The Graduate' was it doesn't matter what the medium is... as long as the material is inspiring and the characters are well written.
If you get a script and it's really well written, that's always exciting.
I think you have to be in an insane stratosphere in terms of fame in order to get offered really well-written scripts. Amanda Peet is definitely not in that group.
Actors look for characters. If they read a well-written character, and if they think the director's not an idiot, they're going to sign up and do some acting.
I love a smart, well-written show, and '30 Rock,' well, you can't get any better than that. Tina Fey poos funny. There's nothing that she does that isn't funny. That show is an example of how brilliant she is. It's so smart. They've done some brilliant commentary about the 'Housewives' with 'Queen of Jordan,' their show-within-the-show.
I feel like if a film is well-written, then the character's arc is complete. There really is very little room to expand on that afterwards.
