No one in 'Banshee' has small opinions. They have strong beliefs, and they will defend them ferociously. Having that element in the show just adds another level. It's another avenue for story, and it enriches the world.
I was curious. Here was a character where I just didn't know how they were going to write him into 13 episodes without it being one note. My fear was that I didn't want to join something where I was just going to be this prop and this mustache twirling character.
What's fun about doing a series is you get to take some time to create the character.
I suppose that the sympathetic/unsympathetic debate about characters sometimes feels to me like a misstatement of purpose. I always think of truly complex characters are falling between the cracks in that debate.
I like grey characters; fantasy for too long has been focused on very stereotypical heroes and villains.
I would love to play a negative guy, play the villain. It is always interesting to have shades to your character.
I believe that each person is more than the worst thing they've ever done.
Part of acting is having the security to turn yourself loose and let yourself go in order to reach whatever depths a character has. If your guts aren't hanging out there, you don't offer anything.
I've never really been serious about my villainy. I don't have a master plan. I suppose my philosophy is: Every villain has a mother. For every cold-blooded killer on your screen, there's a little old lady somewhere who calls him 'sonny.'
When I create characters, I create a world to inhabit and they begin to feel very real for me. I don't belong in a psych ward, I don't think, but they become very real, like my own family, and then I have to say goodbye, close the door, and work on other things.
Having been raised by actors who love moral ambiguity and flawed protagonists, I feel like it's sort of in the blood to want to take it on.
I like playing characters that, you know, a couple could go see the movie and one person could love him and one person could hate him.
The life of a character doesn't just exist between action and cut.
I believe that attributing flaws to medical characters makes them not just doctors but something more. It makes them people.
Even when I'm reading a script where I'm supposed to be looking at the lead role, I'll find myself gravitating toward some small weirdo in a few scenes instead. I'm very instinctive like that and I love the challenge of not having a lot of time to create someone who feels real.
A while ago, I did a television adaptation of 'Bleak House,' and the character I played, as far as I was concerned, had no redeeming features whatsoever. I wasn't about to try to find any; I didn't need to.
I feel I should never do passive characters. They don't work for me.
You can't play Batman in a serious, square-jawed, straight-ahead way without giving the audience the sense that there's something behind that mask waiting to get out, that he's a little crazed; he's strange.
The characters don't all have to be likable, and they don't all have to be hateable. As long as it's interesting and you connect to them and they resonate with you and you want to find out what happens and it feels authentic, then we have something.
Even when I'm playing a lawyer or a doctor, I want to play a person. A human being.
I'm more interested in people the way they are than what they've done onscreen before. So I don't worry much about the acting skills or the name, the status. I just think, 'Do I believe this person? Do I like them? Are they interesting, complicated, have the right aura, energy?'
It's very hard to connect with a character when you haven't gotten a sense of who they are.
The deeper and richer a personality is, the more full it is of paradox and contradiction. It is only a shallow character who offers us no problems of contrast.
It's nice to dig deeper into people who may look one way but always have a story to tell. I obviously write about that a lot.
There is more meat and mileage in complex characters, like 'Running with Scissors.'
