Patty Jenkins Quotes

The idea of goodies and baddies has always fascinated me, and what people consider to be a goodie or a baddie, because I've never seen any of my characters as baddies.

People are much more complicated in real life, but my characters are as subtle and nuanced as I can make them. But if you say my characters are too black and white, you've missed the point. Villains are meant to be black-hearted in popular novels. If you say I have a grey-hearted villain, then I've failed.

I've been playing the bad guy in the last seven or eight projects I've done. I like it. It's a lot more interesting! Being the good guy gets a little stale after a while, you know?

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.

It's very true that you can be both selfless and selfish at the same time. What we tend towards, particularly in filmmaking, is this binary sort of, 'This is a good guy, this is a bad guy.' And I quite like the fact that life is a bit more complex than that.

In general, we are lazy as consumers and just want to label people as good guy, bad guy.

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

Whenever I have tried to make a character bad, they end up being good in some way.

Most of the time when I receive a script, it says something like 'Rosenberg is the fat, slovenly Mayor, who doesn't want the kids to use the Skateboard Park', or 'Stein is a pompous, rotund attorney, imposing to all.' It would be so freeing to get a script where my character is simply described as 'A Man.'

If you're playing a good guy, you show some darkness. If you're playing a dark guy, you show something different, like humor, that will mix it up and hopefully surpass the audience's expectations. What I'm battling all the time is complacency in the audience. I try to bring a little mystery to what might happen because that engages people more.

The nice thing about 'Farscape' is that you got to be the good guy and still do the bad guy things.

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

Are there any good guys on 'Prison Break?' I suppose there might be. I can't honestly say whether I'm a good guy or a bad guy or I'm a good guy in wolf's clothing or sheep's clothing.

The bad guys I play don't want to be bad. It's the struggle between the part of them that's an animal and the part that's the intellect that's interesting.

I haven't spent my entire career playing the guy in the bad hat, although I have to say that the bad guy is frequently much more interesting than the good guy.

When I play a good guy, I try to explore them and figure out what shapes them and makes them interesting. When I'm playing a bad guy, I try to explore everything that makes them good. No one ever really thinks that they're a bad guy.

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

The bad guys are not typical; they are not just bad, they are interesting. They might be good or bad.

I don't feel I'm playing villains all the time.

In general, I think writing characters, no one is 100 percent good or bad, and certainly, the bad characters never think they're bad themselves. Even the worst characters don't feel like they're bad guys on the inside.

'Breaking Bad' is great at blurring the line between good and evil. It makes you feel compassion for Walter White so you're with him throughout this descent into the darker parts of his psyche. The bad that we're capable of is all circumstantial.

In most shows, there's usually a hero or a protagonist, and even if there are multiple heroes or protagonists, most shows try and make it so you really always know who's the good guy and who's the bad guy.

It's much less interesting as an actor playing someone who's purely good or purely evil.

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

When you're not playing the hero of the story, then you have to know that you're always a foil for the good guy. I love playing that. I think that's always an interesting place to be.