Who really makes a character what it is?

There are a lot of great characters in books, movies, video games and tv shows but who should really get the credit for the characters development and personality? Should it be the actors? How about the writers? Personally, I think the actors who play the roles get too much credit. Actors really don't have a lot to do with how a character is planned and envisioned from scratch. Let's look at Heath Ledger as the Joker for example, who's idea was it to make the Joker as dark and insane as he was in the movie? Was it Ledger? Did he have any say in it while the movie was still being written? No, he was just a face and a body to fit the character and deliver what was already planned out from the start. What actors do have some control over is how the character will be delivered on screen. Heath asked to do his own make up and put some of his own DNA into the Joker. I'm talking about the way he talks, the way he wears his clothes, pretty much the way a character presents himself.

In gaming there is even less freedom for an actor since they will just end up reading lines and acting out cutscenes. All character development and story goes straight to the writers but, we don't acknowledge that. We give credit to the virtual character and voice actor instead.

I think book credits are obvious, lol.

This is just my opinion though and I feel that the writers don't get the love and recognition that they deserve until it's too late (usually when that person leaves a team or company and the sequels end up lacking). What do you guys think?

Making a character like the Joker work is really hard as he is clearly insane but still really smart and tactical, making this into a game is hard as you need to get that relation between bruce and the joker just right or it just feels akward, as for acting, getting the right actor can be hard as they need to be able to get into the roll (like heath ledger locking himself in his hotel room untill he was completely in character making it way more believable!

It's a matter of many things that need to dall just in place otherwise it will not work...

Writers may not get as much credit as they deserve, but that doesn't mean we should lessen the value of what the actors do. The writer created the character, and that is amazing in and of itself, but the actor brought the character to life. I know I wouldn't be able to do something like that if I were given some lines to act out; I'd be killing the character the writer created with my horrible performance.

Also, sometimes characters aren't written as being that interesting and yet the actor just does a miracle with it. The best example I think would be Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. The character she's playing is just an ass who complains about everything and expects too much of everybody, yet the actress not only made the character something more than what she was meant to be, but pretty much increased the quality of the entire movie threefold.

Voice actors aren't given as much credit as you seem to think, most people probably can't even name three. As for the "virtual character": the same way an actor would bring a character to life, so do the devs when designing and animating their character, combined with the voice actors.

Also, writers are given credit for writing the story as a whole, where their characters are just a fraction of what they created. Maybe the writers of The Last of Us didn't get too much credit for creating Joel and Ellie, but I know people have given them loads of credit for writing the entire story which, to their estimation, was a masterpiece.

I'd take
Great acting + bad script
Over
Great script + bad acting
Any day