Top 60 Quotes About Complex Characters
#1. Writing complex characters is the penultimate exercise in empathy.
Kevin Focke
#2. A writing teacher once told me that the most successful movies and books were simple plots about complex characters. You should be able to articulate your concept in a couple of lines.
James Scott Bell
#3. Look, I play all these tough guys and thugs and strong, complex characters. In real life, I am a cringing, neurotic Jewish mess. Can't I for once play that on stage?
Jason Isaacs
#4. I'm no longer going to play thugs or debauched cops that I can't possibly make complex characters. I'm bigger than that. I owe too much to too many good people at the Goodman, Arena and Playwrights Horizons.
Isaiah Washington
#5. A lot of the time, a moral compass is all that separates a hero from being a villain; otherwise, the two are very much the same. Both are generally the richest and most complex characters, and they get to have all the fun. I guess it's those types of roles that I ultimately gravitate towards.
Ian Anthony Dale
#6. There's something extremely rewarding about following characters that you like and knowing that there's as many hours of viewing as you have the appetite for. You can tell more complex stories; you can create more complex characters in the longer form.
Jamie Bamber
#7. The opportunities I've had to play really complex characters - which haven't been a lot, but some - you never get over them.
Sally Field
#8. I always look for interesting, complex characters. You know, interesting, well-written material.
Sam Underwood
#9. I totally respond to complex characters, and I'm not interested in anything too simple.
Patrick Fischler
#10. I love complex characters - strong females who are vulnerable but have a life and soul. That's what I'm drawn to and what I enjoy most.
Ruth Wilson
#11. It's something that people relate to - and I hope my kid doesn't relate to - but there's a level of believability in playing complex characters. You know, Christopher Walken has done some hilarious comedies, De Niro. There's great room for complexity and darkness to do well in comedies.
Jeremy Sisto
#12. Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction.
David Brin
#13. Sometimes I make my life a living hell by writing complex stories with complex characters. But I love it.
Kevin James Breaux
#14. I suppose that the sympathetic/unsympathetic debate about characters sometimes feels to me like a misstatement of purpose. I always think of truly complex characters are falling between the cracks in that debate.
Rick Moody
#15. Critics often say, 'Oh she makes films about strong women'. Wrong; I make films about complex characters and the choices they make.
Gillian Armstrong
#16. As for dream roles, they usually just speak to you. I just crave complex characters.
Kirsten Prout
#17. I work very hard at creating complex characters, a mix of positives and negatives. They are all flawed. I believe flaws are almost universal, and they help us understand, sympathise and, paradoxically, feel closer to such characters.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
#18. My passion lies in amazing, complex characters and really well-written stuff - not to say I wouldn't want to do a comedy if the right comedy came along ... I'm an actor in Los Angeles, and I have a family I have to support.
Michael Cudlitz
#20. I enjoy the writing process and producing; I enjoy seeing an idea come to fruition. I'm driven by very complex characters. You look at the pilot of 'Breaking Bad,' where there's so much depth to the character, you can't help but be invested when you watch.
Sasha Roiz
#21. I like to play complex characters and the duality, and trying to reach for the light, it's more interesting really. I've gotten to play so many types of guys and I just try to find the humanity in each one of them the best I can.
Forest Whitaker
#22. Every actor will tell you it's so much more fun to play the bad guy because usually those characters are more complex and more broad and more interesting, and have more sides to them.
Michael Vartan
#23. Every paragraph should accomplish two goals: advance the story, and develop your characters as complex human beings.
Nancy Kress
#24. The Mirror Empire is the most original fantasy I've read in a long time, set in a world full of new ideas, expanding the horizons of the genre. A complex and intricate book full of elegant ideas and finely-drawn characters.
Adrian Tchaikovsky
#25. I try to pick characters that I find interesting and complex and that I feel I can bring something of myself to.
Aaron Stanford
#26. Third person allows a deeper exploration of the relationships between characters. We can see their misunderstandings and hear what they think about each other. We can create a more complex structure with various story threads running parallel.
Juliet Marillier
#27. Each time I discovered a potential link between one character's story and another's, several more connections would reveal themselves, like a beautiful, complex web spinning itself.
Richard Scarsbrook
#28. Normally, we see characters that have God complexes. How interesting, I thought, it would be to capitalize on that. And say, OK, well fine, you have a God complex, well this person has a Satan complex. And the doctor chooses to treat him scientifically.
Eriq La Salle
#29. The beauty of 'The Hunger Games' and also 'Game of Thrones,' in fairness, both projects have really complex, three-dimensional, contradictory, strong women ... The writing of female characters is extraordinary and equal to the men.
Natalie Dormer
#30. For me, there is a stigma attached to playing beautiful parts. They are often empty characters whom the action happens around. I'm more drawn to characters with a complex internal life, who have a burning frustration underneath that keeps them going.
Ruth Wilson
#31. I just like playing interesting, complex, complicated characters. I like films that also have an element of humor.
Steve Buscemi
#32. Do you see that kitten chasing so prettily her own tail? If you could look with her eyes, you might see her surrounded with hundreds of figures performing complex dramas, with tragic and comic issues, long conversations, many characters, many ups and downs of fate.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#33. My stories are pretty simplistic, but the characters are always complex and always right, and that comes from the script and my research and reverse-engineering what I find in the real world.
Tony Scott
#34. I like any film where the female characters are complex and have a functioning imperfection.
Jenny Slate
#35. Adults need more complex narratives. They have their own narratives. The main characters are themselves.
Haruki Murakami
#36. I never thought of myself as explaining cats in general. I simply viewed the cats I have known as characters in my life, often as quirky and complex as the humans with whom I have spent time.
Marge Piercy
#37. characters as rich and complex as those we believe ourselves to be
Thomas C. Foster
#38. I think you can always find interesting, complex and fascinating characters to play in different kinds of movies. It's in your hands.
Anton Yelchin
#39. I look at improvising as a prolonged game of chess. There's an opening gambit with your pawn in a complex game I have with one character, and lots of side games with other characters, and another game with myself - and in each game you make all these tiny, tiny moves that get you to the endgame.
Steve Carell
#40. I give everything to my work, and I like complex roles, characters that aren't obvious. I've been very lucky so far, and I'm dreaming of working with directors like Jane Campion, Susanne Bier and the Dardennes. But the gods will decide.
Eva Green
#41. I love characters that are very layered and complex. It's more exciting and different than any simple role- plus, I love a good challenge.
Lorraine Toussaint
#42. I saw Tequila Sunrise as a romantic picture with complex, bigger than life characters.
Conrad Hall
#43. I continue to be known as a guy that plays really complex, three-dimensional characters.
Robert Knepper
#44. I love to start characters in a place where you think you know them. We can make all kinds of assumptions about them and think they have no redeeming qualities, but like everyone, they're complex.
Callie Khouri
#45. O'Neill presents a very complex multi-layered kind of challenge. His characters are always deeply complex and, to a great extent, inaccessible.
Gabriel Byrne
#46. I think it's really important to depict complex, flawed LGBT characters, because we are all connected by our humanity.
Kit Williamson
#47. I believe that if the story is fleshed out and the characters more believable, the reader is more likely to take the journey with them. In addition, the plot can be more complex. My characters are very real to me, and I want each of my characters to be different.
Michael Robotham
#48. There's a remarkable amount of sexism on TV. When male characters are flawed, they're interesting, deep and complex. But when female characters are flawed, they're just a mess. It's good to put more flawed but interesting female characters out there because it promotes equality.
Ellen Pompeo
#49. The cool thing about Kyle Killen, he writes really defined characters. I was a big fan of 'Awake' and also 'Lone Star.' I just think that he's a really, really special writer, and complex and deep, and a really smart dude.
Jaime Ray Newman
#50. A reviewer once commented that my urban fantasy novels were paced more like epic fantasy, in that they relied on complex world-building and a gradual immersion in the lives of the characters.
Laura Anne Gilman
#51. I first read 'The Lord of the Rings' as an adolescent. It's a dense novel, a sprawling, complex monster of a book populated with a prolific number of characters caught up in a narrative structure that, frankly, does not lend itself to conventional storytelling.
Peter Jackson
#52. I like playing characters that are complex, that are intriguing, that come from left field, that do things that are unexpected. I don't like people who just follow one line and that's it - that's why I could never be in a sitcom, I don't think. They're not intriguing enough for me.
Pete Postlethwaite
#53. I'm interested in characters that are complex people.
Jehane Noujaim
#54. I personally kind of yearn to play characters who are complex and who strike a truthful chord in me and who are challenged in some way and, I guess, who kind of move through those challenges.
Toni Collette
#55. Her characters tend to err when they reject the grubby and complex circumstances of everyday life for abstract and radical notions. They thrive when they work within the rooted spot, the concrete habit, the particular reality of their town and family.
David Brooks
#56. If you detect a needlessly complex style when you read, look for characters and actions so that you can unravel for yourself the complexity the writer needlessly inflicted on you.
Joseph M. Williams
#57. I love female-driven drama, and those kinds of characters. I really love complex women.
Anna Silk
#58. Sometimes people are like, 'Do you want to play strong women?' I don't have to play strong women in order to feel like a strong woman myself, but I do feel it's important to play characters that are complex and interesting and believable.
Bryce Dallas Howard
#59. 'Deity' will be a compelling and exciting thriller with complex and interesting characters. A neo-realistic style to story and images will take the audience deep into Calcutta's many different levels. A fascinating clash between American and Indian culture.
Niels Arden Oplev
#60. Terrific! A successful blend of genres, complex and fascinating characters, and loads of suspense make 24 Bones a must-read.
Nate Kenyon
