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A hero can only be as good as the bad guy.

Good character consists of recognizing the selfishness that inheres in each of us and trying to balance it against the altruism to which we should all aspire. It is a difficult balance to strike, but no definition of goodness can be complete without it.

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.'

I mean, I'm not going to play the hero of something.

You have to do bad things in order to become a hero. You have to make sacrifices.

I never appreciated 'positive heroes' in literature. They are almost always cliches, copies of copies, until the model is exhausted. I prefer perplexity, doubt, uncertainty, not just because it provides a more 'productive' literary raw material, but because that is the way we humans really are.

I love to see heroes who fuel some kind of moral furnace inside them, who are driven to take on the evils of the world, despite the fact that the evils of the world are more powerful than them. And essentially can never be defeated, but they refuse to bow down. And in order to enjoy that aspect of the hero, you've got to put them through hell.

I like heroes, and would like to be a hero myself. I suppose we all want that.