Dane DeHaan Quotes

I get a lot of people saying to me, 'Oh, you're the actor who plays the nutters,' and I'm not. I'm the guy who plays human beings. I understand why the characters are doing what they're doing. When you play a villain, you don't play a villain: you play a human being doing what he thinks he needs to do to get what he wants.

I like playing characters who are fractured, broken. I find that more relatable, for some reason. I don't feel that I'm like that myself by nature, but there's just something that you can really grab hold of if people have a darkness in them, I think.

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 never see my bad guys as simply bad. They want pretty much the same thing that you and I want: they want to be happy.

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

I like the movies that embrace the complexity of the human condition.

Even the most sadistic and destructive man is human, as human as the saint.

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

Ultimately, all characters have some negative and positive energies. That's just how I see it. I didn't go out looking for negative characters; I went out looking for people who have a struggle and a fight to tackle. That's what interests me.

I think I was a little disappointed in her. I expected then people to be more of a piece than I do now, and I was distressed to find so much vindictiveness in so charming a creature. I did not realize how motley are the qualities that go to make up a human being. Now I am well aware that pettiness and grandeur, malice and charity, hatred and love, can find place side by side in the same human heart.

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

The more you spend time with a character, the more you see different nuances of that character.

They want you to think that darkness or evil is only something that gets inflicted on you by the outside world, but I know better, and I think the freak does, too. Sometimes the darkness lives inside you, and sometimes it wins.

I think acting has made me very in tune with human behavior and myself as well.

Gore Vidal said "Nixon is us, we are Nixon." I think we have to acknowledge that combination of idealism and sleaze; we want to be better than we are, and we sometimes don't face up to the real questions.

I balance things better and don't kill myself so much, but conflict makes me a more interesting actress to watch. The places I go to pull emotions from, I think if you have a perfect, happy life, you just don't have those places. And I want those places. I'm proud of those places.

Think neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices are fathered by our heroism. Virtues are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

I think you've really got to cling to what makes sense to you. Obviously, I'm not a serial murderer in my real life, so that's where you have to delve into and do all the research. But, you have to find something likable in the character.

The neurotic thinks himself both Hamlet and Claudius, in a world that belongs to Polonius.

I feel guilty when people say I'm the greatest on the scene. What's good or bad doesn't matter to me; what does matter is feeling and not feeling. If only people would take more of a true view and think in terms of feelings. Your name doesn't mean a damn, it's your talents and feelings that matter. You've got to know much more than just the technicalities of notes; you've got to know what goes between the notes.

I want to live for my truth, my reality, what is important to me and what I’m passionate about. I love acting, and I love being able to tell a story, but working with another human being who is struggling with the same thing that I’ve struggled with, and guiding them towards hope and redemption - it’s you know it’s a triumph, it’s a story of the triumph of the human spirit.

I really believe that all of us have a lot of darkness in our souls. Anger, rage, fear, sadness. I don't think that's only reserved for people who have horrible upbringings.

I know that I've had a very fortunate life, but also I think my job as an actor is to connect emotionally to human beings.

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

A good writer - and I think it's this way with actors too - even if you have two lines, you have to do the same complete work as if you're number one on the call sheet. If you get in an elevator and somebody gets on, rides two floors and gets off, that person has a reality that goes back to when they were born. They have memories, they have people, they have a life. They are doing something right now that the camera is on them in their space. We live in our own close-up all the time.