David Boreanaz Quotes

I happen to like movies and plays about dislikeable people as long as I get to know why they are what they are.

I think it's interesting playing characters who are flawed and make mistakes because we all have - no one's just one thing - no one is just bad or just good - so I like finding flawed characters and playing with their redeeming qualities, whether you play it outwardly or not. I think that one of the reasons I'm an actor is that I love people and I love finding out who they are and why they do the things they do, so it is fun to play those kinds of characters.

Probably the greatest writer of westerns himself was Homer. His character were never all good or all bad. They're half and half, these characters, as all human beings are.

I don't have examples in my life of people who are all good or bad; I have deeply loved many people who are both, and I relate to those kinds of people on a far greater level.

I work very hard at creating complex characters, a mix of positives and negatives. They are all flawed. I believe flaws are almost universal, and they help us understand, sympathise and, paradoxically, feel closer to such characters.

Virtue is not photogenic, so I liked playing bad guys. But, whenever I played a bad guy, I tried to find something good in him, and that kept my contact with the audience.

I try to find what makes even the worst, most despicable character sympathetic at his or her core.

However, for my characters to have depth, they have to be human and complex, have both qualities and flaws, do the right things at times, and at others, things they'll regret having done and not necessarily know how to undo.

None of my on-screen roles have been outright negative. They have all been grey, and that is how it is in reality, too. None of us are nice and sweet 24/7.

I don't like the terms 'positive' or 'negative,' as I think every person has good and bad in them. It's high time that we explore all these sides on television as humans.

I don't like characters who are either good or bad. I just don't experience that in life, so my writing hasn't evolved that way.

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 like playing human beings - I don't believe in good or bad. I don't believe in black and white. I believe in different tonalities. I believe in different layers of emotions and states of mind. I believe in characters that can be human.

You never want to play too vampiric or generically evil, so you look for emotions or character traits that you can relate to.

Think of every character as a main character. They believe they're the main characters in their stories. No one should just be an obstacle.

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.

You may think a crime horrible because you could never commit it. I think it is horrible because I could commit it.

The nobler sort of man emphasizes the good qualities in others, and does not accentuate the bad. The inferior does.

The best characters are always wretchedly flawed

You learn eventually that, while there are no villains, there are no heroes either. And until you make the final discovery that there are only human beings, who are therefore all the more fascinating, you are liable to miss something.

I've always found that it's such an emotional experience, trying to find the good parts of a bad character or the bad parts of a good character, and in the end, most of these qualities are already there inside me.

Not by mere eloquence, nor by handsome appearance, does a man become good-natured, should he be jealous, selfish and deceitful.

You have to find the redeeming quality and love the person for that.

Personally I don't believe in bad people. I think there's always a reason for people acting badly.

I think it would be very difficult to play somebody if they didn't think they had any virtues or redeeming characteristics.