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People come up to me and say, 'You are such a great bad guy.' The fact is that the antagonist in a movie is usually the most fun to play. You can stretch the role and do so much with it.

In all of us, there is a struggle between the good and the bad. It makes it more palpable and real to play such people as an actor.

In most shows, there's usually a hero or a protagonist, and even if there are multiple heroes or protagonists, most shows try and make it so you really always know who's the good guy and who's the bad guy.

I've found that the people who play villains are the nicest people in the world, and people who play heroes are jerks. It's like people who play villains work out all their problems on screen, and then they're just really wonderful people.

It's interesting sometimes when an audience can empathize with a villain.

When you have to play a character that seems to be a relatively decent person and seems to be like yourself, I think the trick in that kind of character, so that you don't become a cliche, is to find where their weaknesses are.

I'm not sure why I'm so drawn to heroes who do bad things and to villains who think they're the good guys, but I do find that moral ambiguity and conflict makes for great characters.

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 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.