Hugh Dancy Quotes

There is more meat and mileage in complex characters, like 'Running with Scissors.'

These people I play are not usually wish-fulfillment characters.

A lot of times, scripts are written so the character is all one way. Even with 'Bringing Out the Dead,' the character was written a little more generic.

People always tell me I'm nothing like my character. Well, hopefully not! He's a character who's very defined. He was purposefully written by Jo Rowling as very one-dimensional in the first few books, because you're supposed to hate him.

The interesting thing about my character Sylar is that my strengths as an actor seemed to go completely against the shape of a character in the shadow.

To me, the struggle is to try to make a less-well-written or less-well-rounded character and find who they are. If you really get it, and it's all on the page, then it's really just gonna pop out at you.

For me, it's first about the characters. I look for a character who is intriguing and challenging and different from what I've done before.

I believe the audience likes to see well-defined characters on screen than just larger-than-life heroes.

I think all interesting characters have some kind of a complex.

But I guess I like playing flawed guys 'cause it gives a place for the characters to go.

There's no particular role that comes to mind that I'd like to take on, but for me, it's about playing interesting characters and not just two-dimensional ones.

A while ago, I did a television adaptation of 'Bleak House,' and the character I played, as far as I was concerned, had no redeeming features whatsoever. I wasn't about to try to find any; I didn't need to.

Also, in my acting, I feel very much like a storyteller, exploring the flaws of the characters that I interpret. I look for the imperfections, and I love a character that is just so flawed.

The thing I respond to the most is just great writing, interesting characters. I like to think that there is something fun about playing a character that has a lot of authority in her own life.

I had been thinking for a while about how bored and tired I was of playing straight-down-the-middle everymanish characters that have what I call white guy problems. And I missed playing characters who lacked dignity and more importantly, lacked social skills.

You know, we have to take these characters - who, granted, have their separate personalities but, on a lot of levels, are pretty two-dimensional - and make them into people with flaws, with insecurities.

Most of my films have a lot of character development and exploration, whereas in most horror movies the characters are just cardboard.

With any role I play, I find out what the human problem is first.

My character should not be ordinary, cliched, and if I feel that it's difficult to do this character, I take up that challenge to get into his character.

I feel like a lot of characters on TV don't have the time to tell that many aspects of a character's story and personality.

The film industry is mostly about unidimensional characters.

I want to give my characters nuance.

There is nothing like being able to develop a three-dimensional character over a long period of time. Sometimes you aren't able to fully portray a character because you only have a couple of scenes to do it in, and you don't get the full life and background of that character.

The world is full of novels in which characters simply say and do. There are certainly legitimate genres in which this is sufficient. But in real and lasting writing the character is.

Characters can become boring. That's what's tricky about television. It goes on and on - you're playing this same character for five seasons and it gets easy to fall into just walking on the set and assuming you know how to play a scene.