Michelle Gomez Quotes

We're not one thing, as human beings, so any character that is written uni-dimensional, that's just a shallow character with shallow writing and shallow acting.

You're only reduced to a cliche if you don't humanize a character.

You can't think that you're playing a villain, or you'll end up with a cartoon. You have to think about him as a person and a hero.

I love flawed characters, male or female, and I only want to talk about flawed characters, really, in what I do.

I always tell my students to complicate your characters: never make it easy for the reader. Nobody is ever one thing. That's what makes characters compelling.

As first and foremost a character actor, I've always resisted the temptation to cure any of the people I've played or make them lovable in any way; you've just got to celebrate them for what they are.

To ground a character in reality, you have to use shades of gray.

The characters are whole, real people to me that I'm getting to know, and since real people are all flawed, so are my characters, I hope.

What I keep searching for in movies, more and more, is the right gravity.

I never play a villain that I don't have something I can either do or say so the audience sees there is something redeemable about them. In other words, I don't want to do evil for evil's sake. I don't want to do Jason slasher movies. There's no point in that.

I love to feature children and young adults as real people - flawed, naive, virtuous, venal - but real. I think it adds nuance and depth to the stories that wouldn't exist without them.

I don't think, as an actress, you want to be beautiful. It's actually a disadvantage because that's not where all the interesting parts lie.

It's a trap I've fallen into earlier in my career - trying to be liked. Don't do it. When I watch TV and I see someone trying to make me like them, acting cute or quirky or goofy, I'm not impressed. Don't act like America's watching you. Just latch onto your character. Characters are flawed. Be unlikeable. Be flawed. Be a person.

I want the kids who watch 'One Tree Hill' to know that it's all pretend, and that the person at the core of that character values morals, honor and things like that. You want to inspire them to look beyond what is superficial and try to find that greater thing.

The worldview implied by literary fiction is complex and ambiguous, trying to be faithful to the complexity and ambiguity of life.

Positive characterizations are complex characterizations. That's all we need to know. They shouldn't be saccharine. They shouldn't feel like medicine.

Even when I'm playing a lawyer or a doctor, I want to play a person. A human being.

I am good when there is something central about the character. There is always a human theme I attach myself to. I am really looking for something that is moving or enlightening or something with depth as an actor. I look for these kinds of roles.

People relate to things that feel real to them. All the good, happy, over-sexed and moneyed endings on TV are not the way most of us feel in our lives. The success of 'E.R.,' I think, is not relying on overly sentimental stories that are solved where people's lives wrap up nicely with happy endings.

A good comic explores the imagination, but it's always got to have those notes of truth running through it.

Even if I'm playing a bad guy, I work hard to make him multi-leveled and interesting.

I'm very drawn to characters who are very flawed. I'm less interested in characters who are just good or bad, because to me then they're not real people.

You can't play a guy who's just a snake, because what do you draw on?

If you go into something saying, 'I'm the bad guy,' you do yourself a disservice as an actor. It's always about trying to find the humanity in a character.

Even while I'm really interested in playing female characters that are varied and interesting and dynamic, I'm not of the mind that you always want to play strong female characters. I think I just want to play characters that are interesting, and not all people are 'strong.'