Campbell Scott Quotes

I tend to play characters that I can infuse with certain kinds of humour. Even the baddest guy can be funny in his own particular way. I want the audience to engage with the character on some deeper level so that they leave the cinema still thinking about him.

I've been playing the bad guy in the last seven or eight projects I've done. I like it. It's a lot more interesting! Being the good guy gets a little stale after a while, you know?

And the most important thing - apart from telling a good, believable story, and being a true character - is to be someone the audience will care about, even if you're playing a murderer or rapist.

I think kids want the same thing from a book that adults want - a fast-paced story, characters worth caring about, humor, surprises, and mystery. A good book always keeps you asking questions, and makes you keep turning pages so you can find out the answers.

Inside of all the makeup and the character and makeup, it's you, and I think that's what the audience is really interested in... you, how you're going to cope with the situation, the obstacles, the troubles that the writer put in front of you.

It's certainly more interesting for me as an actor, but I think it's also more interesting for the audience to see three-dimensional characters, rather than just a bad guy or a good guy.

I love playing roles where it's not just the good guy or the bad guy.

The very first things that I did, even in theater, were bad guys. They are meaty roles for the most part. With the bad guy you have more freedom to experiment and go further out than with a good guy.

One of the things that separates a good genre movie from a bad genre movie, I always think, ironically, is when you care about the people. The dime a dozen ones are where you don't have any awareness of the character.

I often play women who are not essentially good or likable, and I often go through a stage where I hate them. Then I end up loving and defending them.

I don't necessarily prefer playing villains. I know a lot of people say they are more fun, but if the scriptwriter has done their work well, you can find something realistic in a villain and find the mistakes in a hero - it's all down to the writing.

Good guy' or 'bad guy', hero or anti hero; doesn't matter to me, what role I play, only the character have something magical.

I try to write stories that are thrilling and full of mystery and funny all at the same time, stories that raise moral questions but come up with very few moral answers, stories that emotionally touch readers through the characters.

Sometimes, the smaller roles in movies can be the most interesting. If you only take the stance that you'll only play central characters in movies, you'll find yourself not being able to indulge in that morally grey terrain that makes support characters so rich and interesting.

It's people politics, people dynamics that make a show really good, whether it's 'Desperate Housewives' or 'Lost' or 'The Sopranos.' It's the people we've grown to love or otherwise.

I don't like the way some actors, when playing a nasty character, will try to grab hold of something good about them.

I love it when you like a character, and then she does something you don't like, and you hate her for a while - then you love her again. I'd like to see her have unlikable moments that the audience understands and sympathizes with.

When I play a good guy, I try to explore them and figure out what shapes them and makes them interesting. When I'm playing a bad guy, I try to explore everything that makes them good. No one ever really thinks that they're a bad guy.

I think that characters who are nice all the time and who you sympathize with can get really boring.

It's as boring to see a completely evil villain as it is to see a completely good guy.

The bad guys are not typical; they are not just bad, they are interesting. They might be good or bad.

I like stories where there's a center that's mushy and complicated.

I think often times on Joss Whedon's shows he can make you hate a character for a period and then love the character. He does it effortlessly.

'Breaking Bad' is great at blurring the line between good and evil. It makes you feel compassion for Walter White so you're with him throughout this descent into the darker parts of his psyche. The bad that we're capable of is all circumstantial.

No actor can play a villain if they don't sympathise with him or her - otherwise the character just becomes a two-dimensional caricature.