The world of everyday interactions is filled with characters, real or fictitious, and human knowledge of how to make these interactions satisfying and productive relies upon an understanding of character. As agents become more intelligent and more ubiquitous, we may naturally ask how we can endow them with life and personality to make them easier and more gratifying to use. This paper offers a broad definition of animate character, and examines the technical and artistic issues involved both in the creation and the evaluation of such systems. We provide example interactions with several character types. The paper concludes with an annotated bibliographic survey of work done in this area.