Villain Psychology Quotes

We're all the heroes of our own stories. So, when I am inside the head of a character who would otherwise be considered a villain, I have a great deal of affection for that character and I'm trying to see the world and the events through their eyes.

I've never really been serious about my villainy. I don't have a master plan. I suppose my philosophy is: Every villain has a mother. For every cold-blooded killer on your screen, there's a little old lady somewhere who calls him 'sonny.'

I believe the most intricate plot won't matter much to readers if they don't care about the characters, especially in a series. So I try to focus hard on making each character, whether villain or hero, have an interesting flaw that readers can relate to.

I never try and play a bad guy to be bad and to be brutal and to be nasty and vicious, because I think you're going to be very cliche there. You know, you've got to find the truth in that character and what he believes in. It just happens that, you know, he's wrong.

Operas elucidate, in a way sometimes absent in other theatrical productions, the very human fact that in every hero, there is a thread of duplicity. In every villain, there is another side to consider: We don't have to like him or her, but we are compelled to think about motivation.

Beware 'good' main characters who have a limited repertory of culturally acceptable feelings, while your evil bastards have a full range of vivid, passionate feelings.

There is a dark side in all of us. And for us 'bad' people, the bad side dominates. I think there is a great sadness in villains, and I have tried to put that across. We cannot stop ourselves doing what we are doing.

Superman, when he's fighting you, isn't like Batman. He also isn't like Spider-man, who will bully you and make fun of his villains. Why do you think Spider-man's villains all hate him so much? Maybe because as he breaks their bones he's mocking them! Batman's villains are all insane! Superman, when he goes after someone, is essentially not trying to beat them. He's trying to save them from themselves.

I think Shakespeare really got it. He was the first one to introduce psychology to villains and give them a real point of view.

The other thing is we have an incredible villain. And we worked very hard to have villains that are connected to the hero. They have an effect, an emotional effect. They never become out-of-this-world, crazy villains.

When Alan Rickman, a dear friend of mine, played villains, he always made it complicated. He didn't redeem what they did, but he made you feel that it was hard for them to be so horrible.

Shakespeare's villains are fabulous because none of them know that they are villains. Well, sometimes they do.

I did a lot of research on villains, and guys who start behaving nefariously didn't start out as bad people. My research indicates that all of these people were scorned and hurt by love. Darth Vader didn't start off as a bad guy. He was a good guy. Only when Natalie Portman betrayed him, did he go to the dark side.

A lot of the best villains are the ones that think they are right. That think they are the good guy.

The bad guys are not typical; they are not just bad, they are interesting. They might be good or bad.

You can have villains like the Penguin, who strut around in a tuxedo with an umbrella, and Poison Ivy and all of the fantastic stuff she does, but unless there's a bit of a human in there, and unless there's a credible threat, then Batman himself doesn't work.

Somebody - and I'm going to guess it was Hitchcock - once said that everyone has their reasons. If you remember that, as a writer, you'll write better than average villains.

I never play a villain that I don't have something I can either do or say so the audience sees there is something redeemable about them. In other words, I don't want to do evil for evil's sake. I don't want to do Jason slasher movies. There's no point in that.

We want our villains and antagonists to have distinct motivations.

A lot of actors say that no villain wants to be a villain, generally. They don't might being evil, maybe, but they have an agenda that they can justify. Otherwise, a little bit of that tension goes, if you're just a villain and everyone hates you because you're mean.

Usually, characters that are doing something nefarious have some extra layers to them. The general rule is bad people don't necessarily think they are bad.

I don't do villains often enough. There are two approaches: give them sympathetic, reasonable motivations for doing the most unspeakable things, or get inside heads that are interestingly broken.

The greatest bad guys, you understand where they're coming from. They believe they're doing the right thing. Sometimes it's for greed, sometimes it's for other reasons, but they are what they call the center of good. They always believe they're doing the right thing.

At the end of the day, what I try to bring to villainous characters is a sense of humanity.

I always tried to play the bad guys as guys who didn't know they were bad guys. There are villains we run into all the time, but they don't think they are doing anything wrong. If they do, they think they are cunning and smart. When people break laws and ethical rules, they justify it in their own terms.