Mark Billingham Quotes

When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle conceived Sherlock Holmes, why didn't he give the famous consulting detective a few more quirks: a wooden leg, say, and an Oedipus complex? Well, Holmes didn't need many physical tics or personality disorders; the very concept of a consulting detective was still fresh and original in 1887.

British crime stories tend to be very internal, psychological, claustrophobic, very limited in terms of geography.

Inspector Rebus is a great character, so when the opportunity came up to revive the role for 'BBC Children in Need,' and really have a bit of fun with it, I was happy to take part.

One of my complaints with American TV characters is that they all have a particular schtick, a hook.

Maybe I'm a little biased, but shows like 'Dexter' and 'Southland,' I'm just enthralled by that sort of storytelling, kind of clever and patient.

I remember watching 'Colombo' a lot with my dad. That was one of the first detective shows I remember watching. And I remember my dad turning to me - my dad loves to turn to me and explain why things are funny. He used to do that with 'Seinfeld' all the time. He did it with 'Colombo', too, set the scene.

You have to create characters - certainly in series TV - who people engage with. They don't have to be nice; you don't have to agree with them. But they do have to be compulsively watchable and believable and human, and you want to know what happens to them.

I think in Vice and American Me I played very silent, rigid characters and people remember them.

Matt Weiner is very perceptive; there's something about the rhythms and the way people speak that is very authentic to the actor. But there are qualities that are dissimilar. The characters on 'Mad Men' are struggling with pretty profound unhappiness, but I can tell you this is a happy bunch.

It's fun for me to play people that are just kind of odd.

I want to do interesting characters with depth, which are a part of great stories. In fact, if the character is quirky and challenging, that's even better.

'Bosch' itself - it has a huge fanbase already from the Michael Connelly books, so it was definitely intriguing because you know going in that there's all those people who will want to watch it, and I knew it was going to be a down-and-dirty, gritty, no-make-up part, so that was scary and yet so exciting.

I don't think I've seen that sort of character in a long time in this genre because again, there was a time when you could have quirky, strange characters that you grew to love, you didn't quite understand, you know, and then all of a sudden they became almost cardboard cutouts for awhile. You kind of know the guy, what his deal is - this guy's hard to figure out. He has some strange habits, but, you learn to love him and you discover more about him, where it comes from.

I was on Murder She Wrote with Angela Lansbury. She was fantastic... she was lovely to everyone, she was always on time, prepared.

The sneak-peeks you get off the top are of them in their real life. You're more invested, you know both of them, and you've already made assumptions. A murder who would murders someone - that makes them immediately bad - but here you see them in a different.

A lot of characters now on TV have moved into being anti-heroes, but I wanted to be the hero.

The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass; the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.

If you're going to play strength, you've got to marry that with a vulnerability and give your character some relatable qualities.

As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents.

If you've got more ambiguous characters or stock stereotypes, the plastic comes through and they don't work as well.

To say that Agatha Christie’s characters are cardboard cut-outs is an insult to cardboard cut-outs.

All that matters to me as a reader are characters. I want characters to be real, authentic, and rounded. I will be digging into characters for at least a month. Who they are. What they are like. Outside of the story.

There's a point I can get to where I start writing character and then through the dialogue, after all of this preparation, the thing starts to feel like it's a character developing through the dialogue. A lot of character traits do come from writing dialogue, but I have to be ready to do it.

Sherlock Holmes can be wise and funny. He wasn't, at the beginning. But later on, he's got a bantering relationship with loads of people. He's got a wisdom that he didn't have in the early stage. But he stays on the mountain top, and he will die up there. He's not going to change that.

Virtue is in the mind, not in the appearance.