Nnedi Okorafor Quotes

The specific influences on villains to me is, I love the villains who are really hyper-smart. When at the end of the movie you find out what they were about, and it makes absolutely perfect sense from their point of view.

I've always preferred writing about grey characters and human characters. Whether they are giants or elves or dwarves, or whatever they are, they're still human, and the human heart is still in conflict with the self.

Sometimes there is more exploration in the character for a villain.

Villains are fun. I think the important thing in playing them is that they don't see themselves as villains. It lets you be a little more expansive.

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

I would love to play just an all out bad guy who has fun being malicious. It would be totally unexpected, and that's what would make it exciting. Plus, bad guys don't see themselves as bad guys, so you could have fun with that.

I think conflicted characters are always more interesting.

I've got everything against likable characters. Likable characters are usually completely forgettable, and we don't really care. I think we love villains... precisely because they show us these disturbing complexities that I don't think nice characters do.

Exploring the dark side of my characters' personality is my forte.

[My novels] introduce levels of intelligence ... moral doubt [and] self-doubt, which may not pertain [to real-world espionage].

You need to try to find a way to humanize your villains. Genuine villains, in real life, still have mothers and daughters and sisters, and they fall in love. They don't walk around with a big sign saying, "Bad guy," on their head. They think they're good guys. If you can play that, I think it makes it more interesting.

That's to me what always is compelling about villains. I am much more interested in how they think than in what they even do.

If it's a really well written villain, he probably has more layers than the archetypal good person. So that would be very attractive to an actor. No one chooses to be a villain; it's usually a reaction to something else.

I never try and play a bad guy to be bad and to be brutal and to be nasty and vicious, because I think you're going to be very cliche there. You know, you've got to find the truth in that character and what he believes in. It just happens that, you know, he's wrong.

The beauty of Sudhir's protagonists is that they are not shown as black and white. There are various layers to the characters.

I like fractured characters with human follies.

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

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

I want to play a character with grey shades.

I like characters that are complex. I don't like people who are simple to play and are either black or white.

It's much juicier to play somebody a little more evil than Dudley Do-Right.

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.

Somebody - and I'm going to guess it was Hitchcock - once said that everyone has their reasons. If you remember that, as a writer, you'll write better than average villains.

I choose grey characters, as I enjoy playing a human character. I don't shy away from showing the shortcomings of my characters.

At the end of the day, what I try to bring to villainous characters is a sense of humanity.