Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje Quotes

There's more depth to Lionel. What I am finding so interesting about playing him is there's all these different layers. I prefer playing Lionel because he's a human being.

I didn't like characters that were one- or two-dimensional. I liked a guy to have a lot of different levels to him and layers, and I think I pretty well succeeded with Thanos.

I am not interested in one-sided characters.

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.

Life is very, very complicated, and so films should be allowed to be, too.

I like to play characters that are convincing, that aren't just straightforward and nice.

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

Anyone who is drawn in broad strokes either negatively or positively is generally not very interesting to play.

I think the most interesting characters are those in which you can see both sides.

I can excuse everything but boredom. Boring people don't have to stay that way.

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 think difficult characters are very rewarding to do. They often have facets to them and this and that.

I love to start characters in a place where you think you know them. We can make all kinds of assumptions about them and think they have no redeeming qualities, but like everyone, they're complex.

In any work you do, you can be profound one minute, and then you be superficial the next, and you can be smart and insightful and then insipid. There can be room for all that.

Sometimes, the smaller roles in movies can be the most interesting. If you only take the stance that you'll only play central characters in movies, you'll find yourself not being able to indulge in that morally grey terrain that makes support characters so rich and interesting.

I totally respond to complex characters, and I'm not interested in anything too simple.

For a long-running TV show, you're looking for a character who is interesting and vibrant and you can imagine going into all kinds of different areas.

You can drain the life and nuances and complexity out of things by homogenizing them to make everything harmoniously dull, flat, conflict-free, strife-free.

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

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.

I always respond to characters who have depth. I'm always interested in those people. They're the ones who surprise you.

My music has to be funny and sad and happy and loving; it's gotta have it all. When somebody's just too dark all the time, it's just drama. Or if somebody's too funny? Well, I like being too funny sometimes.

If you come across as boring or monotone, you're going to lose your audience.

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

I never wanted to get caught in doing something that was really one note.