Character Archetype Quotes

You're doing it to make the character as specific as possible, so that it's a specific individual that you're talking about, not that whole class of people.

I didn't really look like a character actor, yet those were the roles I loved to play. If you were a character actor who didn't necessarily look like a character actor, you had to play bad guys.

If you do one big commercial film and it's a hit, everybody takes you for that particular kind of a role.

I'm very much aware of the dangers of becoming a cliche. Mr. Anger, someone who gets meaner, angrier on record.

I don't start a film with the heroine but with the cinema subject. If there is a woman in the story, she has to be of a particular type. It's not as if I start with Madhuri Dixit and then think what kind of film.

People often think I've played the villain more times than I have.

I like playing dark, broody types.

As an actor, I probably fall into more of the sidekick/best friend/doctor/lawyer category.

I've never had any delusions about being a leading man, and it's not sour grapes to say that in the best films that I've always enjoyed, the cliched leading man type isn't a part of the picture.

A lot of times, especially with TV, I would get these scripts, and I'm like, 'Oh, they want me to be the good-looking guy who's a little bit of a rascal.' It's just boring.

But it's a Broadway show, so even if you're Christine in Phantom, you're still a princess. All female leads are princesses whether they're Disney princesses or not.

I seem to voice a lot of sweet, kind of dumb yellow characters for some reason.

I think every character that I play has a certain sort of tone or an energy level to them.

For me, Mr. T and Donald Trump are the same sort of phenomenon - they're guys with catchphrases and wacky hair.

I had never had a positive leading character - somebody that wasn't an antihero, or who wasn't more of a guy that you're supposed to be on the side of.

People ask me, 'Are you worried you're going to be typecast as a John Locke type of guy?' I say he's the perfect guy to be typecast as! He's vulnerable and ambitious and sort of unstable. It was a good actor's role.

I enjoy playing a quintessential antihero. There's something therapeutic about playing such characters. I know it sounds corny but I feel like I learn about myself when I play that characters.

Riddick is an antihero. He's the quintessential antihero. We all know how much I love antiheroes. It takes you 45 minutes in the movie just for Riddick to understand the word "heroism," let alone for anyone to hope that he can be heroic.

The thing that influenced me most in relation to 'Nanny McPhee' were the Westerns I watched with my father. All the Spaghetti Westerns; all the Virginians; all the High Chaparrals. Because if you think about the form, it's a stranger from out of town.

Our Bollywood industry works in such a way that when an actor is seen in a gangster's role, he is offered similar roles.

The JBL character, I had had in mind for a long time, a character very similar.

Can it be entirely accidental that the most famous fictional spy of them all, James Bond, Number 007, deadly marksman, intriguer, the ultimate man behind the curtain, sexual athlete and ruthless patriot, is also a Scot, as was the author, whose wish-fulfilment he was?

I've always felt most comfortable in the hopeless romantic, underdog kind of roles who always gets the girl in the end. I don't know what that says about me but for some reason it's a natural fit.

As soon as people see my face on a movie screen, they knew two things: first, I'm not going to get the girl, and second, I'll get a cheap funeral before the picture is over.

'On the Road' is another one of those, a film in which the audience has a very clear idea of who they think your character is, so you know you are asking for it. But that's the challenge.