Nuanced Characters Quotes

I like grey characters; fantasy for too long has been focused on very stereotypical heroes and villains.

I think the parts that I played sort of broke the mould in terms of - you know, I played grey characters, the bad girl with a good heart, there was a good reason for her to be bad.

People are much more complicated in real life, but my characters are as subtle and nuanced as I can make them. But if you say my characters are too black and white, you've missed the point. Villains are meant to be black-hearted in popular novels. If you say I have a grey-hearted villain, then I've failed.

What I dislike about movie culture is that it often presents a parable of our problems - but the issues are all straightforward and the people are either nice or they're not. In real life, everyone falls between those perimeters, but not many American films operate in that grey area.

I think that, for whatever reason, we've gotten to a place where, particularly in Hollywood, things have to be very pat. Like 'I'm a good guy. I'm a bad guy.'

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

Real people are complex, contradictory, and have their own motivations - they can't just be mouthpieces for the writers' point of view.

It's always more interesting to take on someone that's going to have hidden sides or a fatal flaw, because there's going to be more to play with - more conflict, internally or in and around them - but it's probably the thing of finding the positive in there.

That's what attracts me to the kind of characters I try and write - that they're not cut and dried.

What's the trick to writing a great female character? Make her human.

Here are examples of real women who have done real things: good, bad, and in between. We're expanding not just the definition of the female or feminine hero, but also villains and more complex, nuanced female characters. Too often I hear men say, "I don't know how to write women." Here you go, here are five incredible women you can use to inspire your own stories.

I thought that would be kind of cool, to make a bad guy look sympathetic.

I like the opportunity to play characters who have these dark sides but make the audience empathize with them. You want them to think there is some kind of sweeter, softer side to it.

Not to oversimplify it, somebody once said a good rule of thumb in interpreting a character is to find the good in the bad people that you portray and the bad in the good.

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'd been trying for a while to get parts that weren't just the English bad guy, so it was quite refreshing to be playing someone who was a compassionate, decent guy.

I like playing complex, interesting characters. Sometimes I don't think there's much of a strong line between right and wrong for a character. Every character is somewhere on a moral spectrum.

I've played people that are on the line of evil and good, but that's life. We are always playing with the good and the bad. I see them as people. I don't see them as caricatures. I try to not make them caricatures. Maybe I fail, but I try to see what' behind them. Would I play the hero? A superhero? I don't think so. But, I play good guys. There are some there, but you have to look.

Certainly, your characters - whether they are superheroes are not - should have foibles. They should have problems; they should have things that their powers can't solve. That's what makes them nuanced, interesting characters. They can have intense motivations. They should have intense motivations to do what they do.

In other films and TV shows, we might say, "Well, they're just evil." In our show [Daredeval], we're trying to say, "There's bad actions, but not necessarily bad people."

It's very tricky to throw a morally flexible character onto the screen and have an audience empathize. It's always an exercise in restraint.

It has to be said that the bad guys are often more interesting than the good guys because you get to indulge part of your nature that hopefully gets subsumed most of the time. But I just like playing interesting characters, and variety's the spice of that, as it is with life, I suppose.

What's cool about 'Insecure' is it's very realistic and nuanced.

In other words, the people who populate my books are more than caricatures.

To ground a character in reality, you have to use shades of gray.