Sean Bean Quotes

Villains are fun. I think the important thing in playing them is that they don't see themselves as villains. It lets you be a little more expansive.

I did a play once where a reviewer said, 'Martin Freeman's too nice to play a bad guy.' And I thought: 'Well, bad guys aren't always bad guys, you know?' When I see someone play the obvious villain, I know it's false.

It's certainly more interesting for me as an actor, but I think it's also more interesting for the audience to see three-dimensional characters, rather than just a bad guy or a good guy.

If you're playing the bad guy, you have to find what you like about them.

In the best works of fiction, there's no mustache-twirling villain. I try to write shows where even the bad guy's got his reasons.

No actor can play a villain if they don't sympathise with him or her - otherwise the character just becomes a two-dimensional caricature.

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.

Even if I'm playing a bad guy, I work hard to make him multi-leveled and interesting.

I'm very glad people love 'Breaking Bad,' but the harder character to write is the good character that's as interesting and as engaging as the bad guy.

I love playing roles where it's not just the good guy or the bad guy.

I would relish a role that really shows a bit of background into how the bad guy got the way he is... a little more complex than cackling behind a hooded cloak.

It's not that fun to just play a villain, without any reasoning behind it.

I've never seen any character I've ever played as a bad guy or a good guy.

I don't like the way some actors, when playing a nasty character, will try to grab hold of something good about them.

It's as boring to see a completely evil villain as it is to see a completely good guy.

My theory of characterization is basically this: Put some dirt on a hero, and put some sunshine on the villain, one brush stroke of beauty on the villain.

I thought that would be kind of cool, to make a bad guy look sympathetic.

The villains that I play, I always think that they are grounded, wonderful people with enormous intellects who are very exciting to spend an evening with. I never see them as bad people.

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.

Through all the bad guys that I've played, they're justifiably bad - they have their reasons. It's been important to me.

That's sort of what I like about this character is that he's not the good guy, he's not truly the bad guy.

One of the things about the '70s films I love - the films 'Nightcrawler' is being compared to, like, 'Taxi Driver' - is that they never put their flawed characters into any one box.

I have been thinking a lot about what we see in villains, how we relate to villains, and what it is about certain villains that we actually empathize with. Like Macbeth. We're not supposed to like a guy who kills the king and takes over, but there's something about him we're really fascinated by.

You have to be careful so you don't make your character dull and predictable. Sometimes you have to bend the script a little... The bad guys are mostly the same on the paper... A bad guy wouldn't think of himself as bad.

I don't know what it is that I do, but when I play a really bad guy, I'm able to bring some level of likability to it.