Lauren Shuler Donner Quotes

I tend to always love material with flawed protagonists and morally ambiguous people.

I'm interested in flawed protagonists. I was raised on them.

I love playing bad. But my whole thing is usually villains that don't know that they're evil.

It's kind of fun when you're playing characters that aren't quite on the up and up and people still like you.

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.

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.

The beauty of the characters on 'Justified' is that all the human beings that are written are all flawed. Even with the good guys, you see darkness surface.

I'm more fascinated by anti-heroes, and Gambit is one of those.

I like movies that make you semi fall in love with the villain so you have sympathy for him.

Internationally if you see, 'Narcos' and 'House of Cards' are all very dark shows with very dark characters. The audience may hate the character but they will love the actor.

It's really interesting to play someone you wouldn't want to ever spend more than a couple of drinks with - but who has redeemable characteristics.

Yes, I do have a soft spot for complicated villains who can't help themselves.

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

Part of what I like about the best villains in TV and film is when you feel sorry for them, and that makes you feel even worse for feeling guilty about wanting them to succeed, in some way.

Look, I happen to still like really dark, dramatic, fractured characters.

I am really drawn to damaged characters, and I have a lot of sympathy for them. Making those complicated characters empathetic is something to strive for. It's too easy to create a good guy or a good girl.

I always say the classier cousin of 'Anchorman' is 'Mad Men,' because when you really look at it, why do people really love Don Draper in 'Mad Men?' He's just a terrible guy. But we know why he's terrible, and I think that's really key to why you can be sympathetic to a character.

I like characters who have faults. I'm drawn to darker people.

I love to make even villains people you can relate to. When you find out who did it, I think you almost like the person, which is not easy to do.

I've always been interested in the antihero myself.

In general, I am more interested in the darker characters when I watch or read stories.

I find flawed characters much more interesting than perfect ones and enjoy the challenge of making readers root for them in spite of their unsympathetic path and destructive choices.

I think the most appealing characters for the audience are the ones that you never know whether to root for them or whether to hate them. That's what keeps people drawn to their television sets.

I tend to root for characters who have a lot of negative qualities, but what's driving them forward is their passion. They're on a mission, and maybe their approach is misguided, but you can't fault them for giving 150%.

I tend to enjoy roles that I very closely identify with: fringe people and complicated characters, who might even be bad guys, or bad characters that have one redeeming quality.