Dana Ashbrook Quotes

I enjoy doing complicated or peculiar people.

I want to do interesting characters with depth, which are a part of great stories. In fact, if the character is quirky and challenging, that's even better.

I'm just attracted to playing people who are ostensible unlikable. That's not to say that there's something in there that makes you care. It might be that you just find them so awful that you just can't stop watching, like a car crash.

I've never been interested in playing the boring ingenue. I always wonder: Who's her weird friend? I like the oddballs.

The go-to reflex all over Hollywood is still likeability. I've always had a problem with it because I think I have a weird barometer in the sense that some of the characters I've cared about the most in movies are characters that are often thought of as despicable.

When you're writing a book, with people in it as opposed to animals, it is no good having people who are ordinary, because they are not going to interest your readers at all. Every writer in the world has to use the characters that have something interesting about them, and this is even more true in children's books.

You can't say the public likes generic characters. Give others a chance, go for a more rooted and honest characterisation, take some risk, and then let the public choose.

O'Neill presents a very complex multi-layered kind of challenge. His characters are always deeply complex and, to a great extent, inaccessible.

I'd really like to play bad guys or guys that have something a little bit off about them. And I get to do that periodically.

I've always tried to stray towards characters who are way more faceted than your standard leading man role, and I've been fortunate to play some parts who have this awkward tension to them.

Playing weird and quirky characters, like those with weird nuances, I find very interesting.

Some of the most interesting characters in literature and in movies and TV have been ones that you can't quite figure out all the way.

Penelope Fitzgerald never fails to surprise: her language is clever and elegant, her settings are unusual, her characters are unpredictable, and I am always caught out by a line or moment which makes me laugh out loud.

A lot of the 'Portlandia' characters and a lot of the moments aren't really TV-worthy, but that's what is so refreshing about seeing them.

I like playing misfits, I like playing oddballs, I like playing characters with rough edges.

I very much adore people who are outcasts, and I've always loved to be around interesting, circus-type people.

In general, I'm always interested in characters who have kind of extreme aspects to them, who are in some ways larger than typical people.

Difficult folk, these women!

The characters created cannot just be a mouthpiece for the writer. When you look at a piece of writing, and it's genuine and it doesn't feel like every character is just a mouthpiece for the writer, but that they've been created in such a way that they're expressing an idea that a writer wants to get across, that's when a story succeeds.

The most surprising and rewarding chapter to write was the Butthole Surfers chapter. I'd always thought of them as a bunch of drug-addled reprobates - which maybe they were - but it turned out to be more complicated than that.

On the other side, if Im playing a good guy, then he has some problems too. Thats what makes people interesting, in life and in fiction.

I'm always perversely attracted to characters that seem one thing, but are ultimately revealed as another...

To me sympathy for a character has little to do with how morally upstanding or wicked they are. All that really matters for me is how human and interesting they are. I happen to be drawn to characters who operate under intense internal pressure, which often comes from some deep psychological conflict.

David Arnold's writing is both heartfelt and hilarious. You will fall in love with Mim, even as her grand journey will keep you guessing. Mosquitoland reminds us that sometimes imperfect is just perfect.

I'm socially awkward. What draws me to playing socially awkward characters? I think they're interesting. I'm fascinated kind of by - I mean, I know I'm sure I've got my own social awkwardness but I'm kind of fascinated by that and I lived, probably, I attribute it - I lived in New York for a long time, road the subways, saw a lot of awkwardness, but they're just interesting. They're not cookie cutter. They're usually very colorful characters. They see things different ways and, I don't know, its just a kind of - just a kind of life that interesting to me.