Matthew Lillard Quotes

I would think, as an actor, it's just much more fun to be the bad guy.

Every actor will tell you it's so much more fun to play the bad guy because usually those characters are more complex and more broad and more interesting, and have more sides to them.

I've never really had a chance to play a bad guy, and that's something I've always really, really wanted to do. I wanted to experience that really dark side of a person.

Every character I get to play has some element of who I am, but there's no fun in playing yourself. At least, for me, there isn't.

I always like playing the bad guys. They have more fun! I want a director to come up to me and say, "You can't get too weird!" That's a good thing. I loved hearing that. Let me play. I like to play around.

Villains are not fun for me to play, as such. But caricature-ish, intense behaviors that are based on real human traits are interesting. That makes an interesting story.

It's so enjoyable to play a bad guy, you know.

It's much harder to play beloved than to play a rotten guy. Rotten guy is a piece of cake. So playing a beloved person really sets a high bar for your behavior and your acting and what you project.

I got to playing villains-I don't know how. I think it's like anything else, in the movies in particular that if you establish yourself as something and you're lucky enough to keep getting hired. You know, there are guys who play the guy who gets the girl, guys who are the best friend of that guy, there's the funny guy, the villain.

First of all, I would shoot myself if I ever had to play straight-forward characters that really don't have much of a past. Maybe it's just that I'm not a good enough actor to have to embellish, but I like having these really, really rich roles to play.

I seem to have been cast several several times to do it. I think in this one, Phoenix is not purely evil. She was in the comic books at some point but the way the writers created her or we always talked about her, was that she was torn with her powers taking over and trying to control them at the same time. It was challenging to play which made it interesting for me to play this character.

Playing the assholes in the movie is fun.

Villains can often be one note and I would say in that case, it’s not fun to play the villain. It’s fun to play the villain if he a) has dimension and b) the villain gets to do all the things in the movie that in life he would get punished for. In the movie, you’re applauded for them if you do them with panache. And so that’s why it’s more fun to play the villain.

Playing a villain was fun, only because you get to do all the things you wouldn't normally do in your real life.

For an actor, for me, I love being able to tap into just heavy emotions. I don't need to be balling in every scene, but I just love to feel different emotions when heading to set. It's a lot of fun to play with.

I didn't want to play a mediocre villain. I wanted to go full-on.

It's good fun to create an unpredictable character. When he comes into the room, I don't know what he's going to do - I have to find my way.

I'm not a massive fan of just playing myself on screen. If you can play lots of different characters, that's fun. As long as the material is good, that's what the attraction is for me.

I love playing characters that go to extreme places, and I love to explore different kinds of psychological landscapes, so it is ultimately a kind of fun, but it's also complicated and colored by the depth of the nastiness of it, at certain times, as well.

I like conflict, drama's conflict and if you don't have that in the character it's really not a worthwhile role to play for me.

I just try to play more and more difficult roles.

There is always something about the villains that I'm able to play, quote unquote, that isn't villainous.

I've often wanted to play the victim, or somebody who makes terrible choices. I would love to play the alcoholic mother who horribly lets down her children. That's a great morally imperiled role.

I'm known for playing bad guys, so this was an interesting departure from what I'm known to play, which is a softer, more likable, affable character.

I love playing a villain. I think that there's something freeing about that, and it's a different kind of challenge. More than anything, for me as an actor, it's about challenging myself and doing as many different things as I can.