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A lot of actors would tell you that they'd rather play the villain than the hero. When you're the character, there are no repercussions. So there is a kind of liberating feeling about saying certain things to certain people - and I think that it's always quite satisfying to do that.

I think for some reason we're conditioned in movies that the protagonist must be heroic or redeemable in some way, whereas in theater, that's not a necessary.

Sometimes a character is really based on research that you do. Other times it's just based on your imagination or perhaps your conversation with the director. Or sometimes all of the above. It depends on the movie and character.

When Shakespeare begins his exposition thus he generally at first makes people talk about the hero, but keeps the hero himself for some time out of sight, so that we await his entrance with curiosity, and sometimes with anxiety.

I'm always interested in the ways in which a character can inhabit either a theme or a premise personally, so that those scenes that are about his character or his relationship with other characters feel in context and don't seem to be apart from or oddly vestigial to the actual drama.

I think that ultimately any effective drama or tragedy tries to put you as much as it can into the protagonist's shoes.

I would rather portray the hero if it's a really great film. All my favorite fictional film characters are heroes, such as in 'The Last of the Mohicans' and 'Robin Hood.'

When an actor decides to play a character, he must exude some sort of charisma and look relatable, even if he is playing the role of a really unattractive person.