Fred Melamed Quotes

I like playing interesting people, I like playing slightly twisted people. I like playing people who have large appetites who are kind of a bit larger than life.

My characters all have issues, but I don't see that as weird or abnormal because I think in real life there are very few bland, normal people.

I like characters who are larger-than-life, whether life-loving women or the artist or guru who grabs everything. But I don't live among people like that.

I've always loved reprehensible people because they're so much more interesting to play on screen.

Some of the most interesting characters in literature and in movies and TV have been ones that you can't quite figure out all the way.

'Twin Peaks' has got interesting characters. They are all different from anything anyone has ever seen before. You've had bad people before. But everyone's got little quirks, and everyone's interesting.

I try to write about real women, real people - in other words flawed characters. I find flawed characters much more interesting than perfect ones and enjoy the challenge of making readers root for them in spite of their unsympathetic path and destructive choices. Life is about the gray areas. Things are seldom black and white, even when we wish they were and think they should be, and I like exploring this nuanced terrain.

The characters I tend to play are a little more interesting than the standard heroes. Romantic leads can be a little more straightforward, I guess. But it just seems to be the parts I get, I don't know what that says about me. I enjoy interesting characters and interesting people, I suppose.

I always think that the most interesting characters are those that are trying to cover something or those that have some sense of bravado or composure.

I was not interested in doing the plot of Oedipus in blackface. I did wonder, what would these people have been like if they hadn't been in that situation?... One could look at Oedipus, or at my character Augustus, as a cynical schemer who did everything because he was hungry for power. But that's just too easy. I'm more interested in how humans can embody conflicting goals and emotions.

. . . I felt that making her one-dimensional would be an insult to the audience, and also not as interesting. All destructive people have an inner side to them, and the more three-dimentional your characters are on screen the more compassion you can open up in an audience . . .. To me, that involves the audience more, it stimulates them and asks more of them.

I'm socially awkward. What draws me to playing socially awkward characters? I think they're interesting. I'm fascinated kind of by - I mean, I know I'm sure I've got my own social awkwardness but I'm kind of fascinated by that and I lived, probably, I attribute it - I lived in New York for a long time, road the subways, saw a lot of awkwardness, but they're just interesting. They're not cookie cutter. They're usually very colorful characters. They see things different ways and, I don't know, its just a kind of - just a kind of life that interesting to me.

Exceptional people deserve special concessions.

Nice characters are boring!

I've always been interesting in characters that challenge people and who are not always that easy to like.

Interesting characters are troubled characters. The only problem I've had in my business is very few people - unfortunately, very vocal - confusing the difficult role that I play with me. I play these guys, but I'm not like them. I've been accused of being difficult to work with.

I read more and more and I came across this character, Caroline Weldon. Sometimes in history, you find these people that no one would dare create. They're too mad.

Theresa Rebeck's writing is so scarily funny. I just love how unapologetic she is with her writing: she doesn't try to make her characters likeable or heroic, she just really makes them human. Hopefully, the audience is able to love them in the end - or have whatever feelings that they want to have about all of them - but I love that she doesn't have that agenda. That is something that, as an actress, was really appealing to me; to just get to be in this group of people who are complicated and very human.

I think there's grays in characters if you look at all the great characters, those characters that have those layers of being good and being bad and what's the struggle. It's always more interesting to watch.

I don't think I've seen that sort of character in a long time in this genre because again, there was a time when you could have quirky, strange characters that you grew to love, you didn't quite understand, you know, and then all of a sudden they became almost cardboard cutouts for awhile. You kind of know the guy, what his deal is - this guy's hard to figure out. He has some strange habits, but, you learn to love him and you discover more about him, where it comes from.

That's what makes characters interesting. If Sherlock [Holmes] had started out being a straightforward man, we wouldn't be talking about him now. If he became one, that would be interesting. But you have to give him somewhere to go, as [Conan] Doyle did.

Guys who are larger than life and theatrical and deliciously unpredictable - they're far more interesting than the good guys most of the time. They have these psychological layers that an audience can really cling on to, become fascinated with, much more so than these true-blue, one-dimensional, square-jawed good guys.

People have obsessions and fears and passions which they don't admit to. I think every character is interesting and has extremes. It's the novelist privilege to see how odd everyone is.

It has to be said that the bad guys are often more interesting than the good guys because you get to indulge part of your nature that hopefully gets subsumed most of the time. But I just like playing interesting characters, and variety's the spice of that, as it is with life, I suppose.

Pay any price to stay in the presence of extraordinary people.