As I was reading through it again, editing and rewriting as needed, I realised the image a reader will create in his or her head may actually have quite little to do with any specific physical characteristics described by an author. Certainly they will form a framework for perceptions, but it's these other details that will flesh out the creations.

Information comes out through their interpersonal relations with others, the ways other see them, and how they are described behaving in certain circumstances. People can change over the course of their lives, and characters in a novel are no different. So one has to keep that in mind while writing lest you end up with cardboard cutouts that simply parrot the words you put in their mouths without revealing anything of their soul.

I would think that ideally you'd not want to recognise the people you've created. When you re-read your draft they have grown so far beyond what you were thinking, although they are the same character you created, that they reveal themselves to be much more then you remember.

Konstantin Stanislavski has developed a less then stellar reputation among modern theatre people due to the wrongful belief that he is responsible for method acting. Lee Strasberg's "method" was guilty of a glaring omission from what Stanislavski had created to assist actors in bringing honesty to their stage creations.

While Stanislavski preached character development based on the information provided by the script and an actor's imagination, thus removing the personality of the actor from the performance, Strasberg skipped that part and focused solely on teaching his pupils how to recreate emotions on stage through sense memory. Instead of the actor creating a character who would express those emotions, Method actors would be themselves on stage emoting all over the place.

An actor with a fully developed character has no reason to wonder what his or her motivation is for doing something, the answer lies within easy reach simply by asking what would my character do in these circumstances. The Method actor, having nothing of substance to draw upon, will puzzle over the simple task of opening a door to get to the other side for hours. (Federico Fellini, the great Italian director, was reported to have said that he hated working with American actors because they were constantly wondering what their motivation was to open a door.)