Ashish Sharma Quotes

I've always wanted my characters to have more dimension and realistic cores than the ingenue material often provides. It's been a challenge.

I know myself - I cannot just play a cliche. It has to be a character; it has to be written with the complexity of the human being behind. Could be bad, could be good, could be someone we would hate, but still, I need a reason for that influence, and I need to understand why.

But I guess I like playing flawed guys 'cause it gives a place for the characters to go.

When I create a character, particularly my central character, I want someone who is interesting and feels real and who might have quite a few virtues but is unlikely to be perfect, who hasn't necessarily made all the right choices.

If I'm reading a script, and I'm not buying it, I need to be able to relate to the character on some level, and they need to have more than one dimension. I need to have an idea of what this guy's thinking about when he's taking a shower not on camera. And if I can't picture him taking a shower and getting dressed, then he's not a real person.

There's a horrible fallacy that exists in the popular discussion of fiction these days: the idea that a successful central character need be 'likeable' or 'sympathetic'. It is surely more important that they be human, no? More crucial that they breathe?

You know, we have to take these characters - who, granted, have their separate personalities but, on a lot of levels, are pretty two-dimensional - and make them into people with flaws, with insecurities.

I like the characters that have some redeeming quality or if it's interesting to me in any way.

I let characters be human and flawed and relatable. When we do things that aren't that great, we can understand it.

The characters are whole, real people to me that I'm getting to know, and since real people are all flawed, so are my characters, I hope.

I usually start with a repulsive character and go on from there.

The thing that I like about the way characters are written on the show these days is that nobody's perfect. Everyone has made a lot of mistakes and bad choices.

A lot of times, scripts are written so the character is all one way. Even with 'Bringing Out the Dead,' the character was written a little more generic.

Also, in my acting, I feel very much like a storyteller, exploring the flaws of the characters that I interpret. I look for the imperfections, and I love a character that is just so flawed.

What helps writers, and ultimately, obviously, helps the actors - who should serve the words that the writer puts on the page - is if the character has damages, because then the writers can cultivate and excavate, like a dentist going into a tooth.

All of my characters are less than perfect.

To me the interesting main character is never the one without flaws.

My characters are not plastic.

I'm sorry, but to ask an audience these days to invest three hours in a show requires your heroine be an understandable and fully rounded character.

I wanted more in depth ideas about the character and it never came.

In a novel, if you're any good, you don't just have good people or bad people. You have complicated people. You have real people.

I believe strongly that characters are five-dimensional, and they're complicated, and life is complicated, and people are complicated.

I think I am more attracted to characters with a subtext, whatever that is and they don't necessarily have to be virtuous, but they have to at least be human.

I think any character has to be well-rounded, whether they are male or female - they have to be complex and make choices that maybe we don't agree with, you know? I guess that's what makes them human.

Everyone likes a bit of variety. I'm sure none of my readers only want to read about anti-heroes or villainous protagonists any more than they only want to read about square-jawed heroes doing the right thing. I just write characters than entertain me and hope they'll be ones that other people want to read about, too.