Jon M. Chu Quotes

No actor can play a villain if they don't sympathise with him or her - otherwise the character just becomes a two-dimensional caricature.

I believe strongly that characters are five-dimensional, and they're complicated, and life is complicated, and people are complicated.

As an actor, I'm constantly striving to find the darkness in the lighter characters and the lightness in the darker 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.

I'm drawn to villains that are three-dimensional and raw and that I can kind of see in my own life.

I don't worry about whether a character is likable, as long as the character is believable.

I don't really like simple characters too much; it's too easy. I like a challenge, and I like characters you connect with on screen.

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.

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.'

Fallible characters are more interesting than superheroes in the end.

It's very hard to play a man without any flaws.

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

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

I want to give my characters nuance.

I love roles where it's not about being perfect or being beautiful, where there is more of an interest in what's going on inside the character.

The more shaded, flawed characters that are struggling, I think there's something very relatable about that.

As a writer, I have to show complexities. Through my writings, I hope to bring out people in different situations and not just one-dimensional beings.

I'm always much more interested in flawed heroes than in perfect ones.

With my writing, what I want to do is humanize the young people I write about.

For any character, male or female, I think it's important to have... it's cliche to say a flawed character, but to really think about the good and the bad and make sure that both are present, and it doesn't just become a glossed over icon of perfection.

I don't believe novels should carry an obvious message. I don't want to write characters you can immediately say are good or bad; as in life, most people are a mixture.

To recognize yourself in a character onscreen, and to connect with them, you gotta recognize their flaws; they gotta feel like a real person.

I continue to be known as a guy that plays really complex, three-dimensional characters.

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