Jami Attenberg Quotes

I like risky parts - abrasive characters the audience won't necessarily like.

I'm just attracted to playing people who are ostensible unlikable. That's not to say that there's something in there that makes you care. It might be that you just find them so awful that you just can't stop watching, like a car crash.

I'm more interested in characters who are a little difficult.

I like playing weird, kind of shady people.

I went to film school so I have a writing and directing background, and I think a lot of the material I'm interested in writing and getting out there is stories about anti-heroes and people you should just not ordinarily root for - trying to figure out a way of appealing to people they wouldn't normally appeal to.

I think everybody likes to play the villain. They're always much more interesting characters.

I would like to, especially in film, play against type and do some heavier stuff. I'm intrigued by projects that deal with problematic people and things.

The best characters in books are always the difficult ones, and why would you want to fall in love with someone difficult? The ones I'd fall in love with are the ones I'd definitely keep out of a book.

I think I'm drawn to characters with complexity or who are under duress in some way and have some conflict going on.

The go-to reflex all over Hollywood is still likeability. I've always had a problem with it because I think I have a weird barometer in the sense that some of the characters I've cared about the most in movies are characters that are often thought of as despicable.

I like to play the weirdos. I like to play the people that are hard to like. You get to say and do things that you would never say and do in real life.

If you think about Shakespeare, you remember Richard III and Macbeth before you remember Ferdinand, whose role is just to fall in love and be a bit of a wimp. I love the baddies. More important, though, is making the baddies somehow, weirdly, understood.

I'm not sure why I'm so drawn to heroes who do bad things and to villains who think they're the good guys, but I do find that moral ambiguity and conflict makes for great characters.

I love playing characters that are bigger than life and maybe have a darker side that they present to the world. Those are good characters.

I'm attracted to playing people who aren't necessarily straightforward.

I like to play people who are underdogs and misfits. People who are not on a straight and narrow path. That's exciting for me.

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

Male critics and men in the publishing industry want from their women writers what they want from their wives. I'm interested in presenting characters that are more challenging, threatening, complicated and unpredictable.

I've always loved reprehensible people because they're so much more interesting to play on screen.

The characters you refer to as predatory and unsavory are useful. They're the ones who make a novel into a thriller. They're active, and most of the common virtues, the signs of a good person, are not.

I think anyone loves to play a character that is either evil to a certain extent or has a real definable character flaw. Those are always really fun, and, I think, funny.

Those are the kinds of roles you can really sink your teeth into. Characters with an edge. When you're playing someone who's sort of seedy, there's less limitation, there's so much space you can travel. There's room to move in.

Every actor will tell you it's so much more fun to play the bad guy because usually those characters are more complex and more broad and more interesting, and have more sides to them.

I've met every freak in the business.

Usually, characters that are doing something nefarious have some extra layers to them. The general rule is bad people don't necessarily think they are bad.