Free Character Profile Template (PDF) With 4 Movie Examples

A character profile template is a worksheet that makes you decide who your character is before you write their first scene. Most writers know what their hero looks like. Fewer know what their hero wants, what they need, and what’s stopping them. This free character profile template asks those questions on two pages. It’s a fillable PDF in US Letter and A4, with a filled-in example and four characters from classic films broken down the same way.

What Is a Character Profile?

A character profile is a written record of everything you know about a character: who they are, where they come from, what drives them and how they change.

• Who uses it: screenwriters, novelists, actors, game writers and role players
• Other names: character sheet, character bio, character template or character bible (for a whole cast)
• When to write it: before the first draft, then update it as the story changes
• How long it takes: 20 to 40 minutes for a lead, less for a supporting role

It isn’t there to be filmed. Most of it never reaches the screen. It’s there so that when your character walks into a room, you already know what they’d do.

What’s in the Character Profile Template

The template is two pages, and every field is fillable. Print it if you’d rather write by hand.

Character Profile Example: Maya From “The Note”

Here’s the profile for Maya, the lead in “The Note”, the short film from our call sheet template and shot list template. A woman finds a note pinned to her front door at night. The profile is what makes that moment matter.

1. Start with the sentence. “A night-shift nurse who moved back into her mother’s farmhouse finds a note on her front door that only someone from her past could have written.” If you can’t write this line, the rest won’t help yet.
2. Make the want concrete. Maya wants to find out who left the note. You can film that.
3. Make the need internal. She needs to stop carrying the summer she was twelve alone. You can’t film that directly, which is why the story exists.
4. Tie the flaw to the need. She shuts people out. That’s exactly what stops her from telling anyone the truth.
5. Give the wound a place. Her best friend went missing by the old well. Now the well is in the yard she walks past every night.
6. Write the arc as actions. At the start she locks the door twice. At the end she opens it.

Character Profile Examples From 4 Movies

Here are four film characters run through the same template, counting down to the clearest arc.

4) Rocky Balboa in Rocky (1976)

Rocky stands in the empty arena the night before the fight and realizes he can’t win.

This is where the want and the need split apart. After the visit, he tells Adrian he can’t beat Apollo Creed, so he changes the goal. If he’s still standing after 15 rounds, he’ll know he’s not just another bum from the neighborhood.

He loses the fight on points. He gets what he needed anyway. That’s why a scene about a loss plays as a win, and why the film took Best Picture.

3) Woody in Toy Story (1995)

Woody is Andy’s favorite toy until a space ranger lands on his bed.

Woody’s wound is fear of being replaced, and Buzz walks in as the thing he fears. His flaw is that he dresses the jealousy up as leadership. The other toys see through it, and so does the audience.

The want is simple and visual: the spot on Andy’s bed. The need only becomes clear when both toys are lost at Sid’s house. Write your want and need this plainly and a family audience will follow every beat.

2) Mark Baum in The Big Short (2015)

Mark Baum is angry at the banks long before he has proof they’re rotten.

Baum’s wound drives everything. He blames himself for his brother’s death, and the film makes it clear his anger at the banks is anger he can’t point at himself.

This dinner scene is where his want comes true. He learns how deep the fraud goes, and it makes him sick rather than happy. The character profile explains the ending before you see it: getting what you want doesn’t fix what you need.

1) Michael Corleone in The Godfather (1972)

Michael arrives at his sister’s wedding in a Marine uniform, the one son who isn’t part of the family business.

At the wedding, Michael tells Kay, “That’s my family, Kay, it’s not me.” Every box on his profile starts from that line. By the end, the want has swallowed the need, and a door closes on Kay.

It’s the clearest arc on this list because you can fill in all three arc boxes with a single image each. Uniform at the wedding. Gun in the restaurant. The door closing. If your arc works as three pictures, it’ll work on screen.

How to Write a Character Profile

• Fill the core boxes first. Want, need and flaw. Skip eye color until those are done.
• Keep it short. A sentence per box is enough. A profile you won’t reread is no use.
• Write behavior, not adjectives. “Checks the lock twice” beats “anxious”.
• Profile the antagonist too. A villain with a clear want is a better villain. Our guide to the anti villain shows how.
• Update it after every draft. If the character changed on the page, change the profile.

New to building characters? Start with character development: the fundamentals and what makes memorable characters. Then read what is a character arc and our guide to secondary characters. The internal conflict guide goes deeper on the gap between want and need. Once your character is built, plot their story with our hero’s journey template.

When your characters are ready, put them to work in a story with our free film treatment template.

FAQs About Character Profiles

The Final Cut on the Character Profile Template

A character profile template puts the questions in front of you before your character walks into the first scene.

Download the PDF and start with three boxes: want, need and flaw. Then map the arc as three pictures.

If your character can surprise you in the questions on page 2, they’ll surprise your audience too.