Julie Benz Quotes

I find that the most interestingly written parts happen to be the bad guys.

I tend to play characters that I can infuse with certain kinds of humour. Even the baddest guy can be funny in his own particular way. I want the audience to engage with the character on some deeper level so that they leave the cinema still thinking about him.

I like French films, Chabrol in particular. With him, you often get a skewed morality in which you sympathise with the person you shouldn't.

If you're playing a good guy, you show some darkness. If you're playing a dark guy, you show something different, like humor, that will mix it up and hopefully surpass the audience's expectations. What I'm battling all the time is complacency in the audience. I try to bring a little mystery to what might happen because that engages people more.

I love playing bad. But my whole thing is usually villains that don't know that they're evil.

I love it when you like a character, and then she does something you don't like, and you hate her for a while - then you love her again. I'd like to see her have unlikable moments that the audience understands and sympathizes with.

I'm not sure why I'm so drawn to heroes who do bad things and to villains who think they're the good guys, but I do find that moral ambiguity and conflict makes for great characters.

I don't like movies that are morally simple.

Before I accept a job, I always talk to folks about it. 'Why does he kill these 22 people?' If they say, 'What difference does it make?' I know we have nothing more to talk about. A character has to be three-dimensional.

Audiences grew to like this duality of feeling, where you're both championing a character and you're revolted by them.

You get Don King's point of view in what is almost a Shakespearean, classical technique. He comes across almost like a lovable rogue, like Iago in 'Othello' or Richard III. He's doing all these bad things, but I kind of like him. It's like 'Pulp Fiction': Everybody's a bad guy, yet you like them.

I do sometimes play characters that are a bit ambiguous. You've got to be brave about that sort of stuff. I like the sense of people not feeling too secure, not immediately knowing what they have in front of them.

I prefer to work with grey characters rather than black and white.

I'm drawn to the classic antihero, the guy who's probably made a bunch of mistakes and really has the capacity to go either way. That's the most interesting type of character for me to watch, to see what decisions they'll make. There's a lot of gray area there for a writer to explore.

I think 'Scarface' is a great film, but if you have a character like Tony Montana, you don't identify with him at all. I think it's very interesting instead to identify yourself with a character you don't like all the time. You can create a tension between the fiction and the viewer. You force the spectator to wonder about his actions.

Sometimes even when the book is over I don't know who's good and who's bad. It's really more interesting, I think, to write about gray characters than it is to write about black and white.

Everyone says villains are thankless parts, but those are really the best roles.

I think the most appealing characters for the audience are the ones that you never know whether to root for them or whether to hate them. That's what keeps people drawn to their television sets.

I don't know whether it's audiences or filmmakers who want characters to be likable today, but I don't think actors are afraid of their characters being unlikable.

Gee, I wish that life were so black and white that you can't think of a single person who, you know, a good person who has done bad things.

Internationally if you see, 'Narcos' and 'House of Cards' are all very dark shows with very dark characters. The audience may hate the character but they will love the actor.

I like the idea of a character that you wanna like even though you know he's making immoral choices throughout the film.

I could watch 'There Will Be Blood' all day long, and Daniel Plainview is a terrible person - but he's still compelling to watch. That's what makes me want to engage and see what happens next.

Playing somebody who's obsessed. Playing somebody who is transgressing, and who is really crossing moral lines and ethical lines. That's always interesting.

The pure and simple truth Is rarely pure and never simple. What's a boy to do When lies and truth are both sinful?