Of course I base my characters partly on the people I know—one can't escape it—but fictional characters are oversimplified; they're much less complex than the people one knows.

Every fictional character is based on someone. My English teacher told us that.

I usually begin with the idea of a character and then work on getting to know the character better. I’ve learned from actors that if I try to embody my characters physically, by walking, talking, and even dressing like them, then my characters become more real to me and therefore more believable on the page.

I rarely take the characteristics of someone I know and make them a complete fictional character, except maybe with truly minor characters who only play a small role. All of my characters are more like the Frankenstein monster, having been stitched together using multiple real people. The classic advice to any writer is "write what you know". So in order to create believable characters, you have to write about people you know.

If someone asks you where you get your characters... and they're sure to do that... you always say, "He's a combination of a lot of people I have known." That way, if your character is a damn fool, nobody will want to identify with him... To tell the truth, I don't know how a man gets a character for a story, anymore than I know how he falls in love. I don't know if his characters spring full-blown from his head, or if he sees a man walking down the street and recognises him instantly... I doubt any writer knows for sure where his characters come from.

I tap into three different personas to bring out the best of the character. I look at people I know. The cheeky aunties who take no nonsense and those women who think they are up there when they are not. I improvise on set too

You want to avoid at all costs drawing your characters on those that already exist in other works of fiction. You must learn about people from people, not from what you read. Your reading should confirm what you’ve observed in the world.

Whenever I break down a character, the first thing I do is I’ll pick out the moments that I relate to with the character. I build on that. That’s how I make a character that is true to myself while representing different things.

No, I don't believe we've ever designed a character around a person. Usually, we start out with a kind of personality.

For me, the characters are part of the story, and come out of its development. I don't base them on people, or parts of people – the Frankenstein method. I base them on what I've noticed about the human race. … I cannot tell you how stories develop. I have an initial idea, and start telling myself the story, day by day.

Your source material is the people you know, not those you don't know, [but] every character is an extension of the author's own personality.

When I get a script, apart from what my director is planning to draw for me, I go to the drawing board, I imagine a lot of things. I dig up experiences which might not be my own. Things I have heard and I create the character.

I have always done my sketches, as people would say, for the fun of it... I have worked to amuse myself, and if it has amused the public as well, so much the better for me.

When you're writing a character, you have to know where they're coming from. You may never use that information, but you have to know it. It just helps you mark the journey better.