James D'arcy Quotes

You know, I think a lot of times what happens when we as actors know we're playing a bad guy is we get into bad guy mode. You know what, man? In real life, bad people do good things too and good people do bad things. So you don't necessarily have to be the stereotypical bad guy to still do bad things.

What makes 'The Wire' a beautiful story is how true to life it is. In other shows, you have a good guy and a bad guy. In 'The Wire,' bad guys are trying to be good, good guys are doing bad. You have real life. The people who do bad get bad things done to them.

Being a good actor is sort of understanding the complexity of the human psyche and also knowing that we are none of us perfect.

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

Everybody has parts of themselves that they're not 100% happy with - that's what makes you human. And being an actor, your job is to play human beings. Your job is to play real people.

I prefer to play the bad guy - it gives you more freedom as an actor.

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

I think all of us have a hero and a villain in us.

If we are completely honest with ourselves, everyone has a dark side to their personalities.

The older I get the more I realize there's no real good guys or real bad guys, and I'm curious about how the good guys got good and how the bad guys got bad.

Acting is usually regarded as a wholly narcissistic pursuit but there really is a hunger in me to unravel the human condition.

I think any time anybody sees the bad guy show emotion and you're not hitting the audience over the head, there's always a tinge of empathy for that individual.

I try genuinely, when I'm playing a character, to not judge them and just to inhabit someone as how one sees them. That being said, you also want to make sure that you don't blur the edges of people too much because humans are naughty and complicated beings.

I think humans are fascinating in general. We're so weird. We do so many quirky things, and we don't even know it. There's just so many layers upon layers of nuances in everything we do, and the most fun part as an actor is trying to get into all those nuances, whether they're conscious or unconscious.

I certainly don't like to play a bad guy. There are no bad people. It's only shades of grey. Also, I am not a great actor who can transform completely into a totally different character for a movie. I am not a trained actor.

Even the toughest people have a backstory, and villains don't feel like they're the bad guys.

Being an actor requires a lot of self-analysis and reflection. The better you know who you are, the better you are at becoming another person.

You can't play a bad person; you can only be a person who does bad things for the right reasons.

Writers must be fair and remember even bad guys (most of them, anyway) see themselves as good—they are the heroes of their own lives. Giving them a fair chance as characters can create some interesting shades of gray—and shades of gray are also a part of life.

I feel my job as an actor is to explore all sides of humanity.

I've learned a lot about good and evil. They are not always what they appear to be.

I try as best I can to enter the realm of nuances of human behavior.

In 'Garden Party' or '40 Days and 40 Nights,' I played characters who people don't necessarily like; I just find some humanity in them.

I tend to get comfortable with the dialogue and find out who the person is in the script and try to hit that. People are sort of independent of their occupations and their pastimes. You don't play a politician or a fireman or a cowboy - you just play a person.

I feel that I'm sort of playing me but more feminine, and to me more feminine means smarter.