A Quote by Steven Berkoff

I've played a lot of bad guys in my time, especially in movies. It's delightful playing the villain. It's almost the most interesting and most complicated role in a film.
I think most actors probably enjoy playing the bad guy. I think it's the fact that most of the time, heroes aren't written with enough interesting qualities or flaws, and that leads to the bad guys being almost the runaway train, as far as being more interesting for the audience to watch.
It has to be said that the bad guys are often more interesting than the good guys because you get to indulge part of your nature that hopefully gets subsumed most of the time. But I just like playing interesting characters, and variety's the spice of that, as it is with life, I suppose.
I would have loved to do a film like 'Piku' or 'Neerja.' But I never got a role where a woman played an authoritative role. In my time, the hero and the villain were both men. The heroine was only the victim.
I much prefer playing the bad guys. I think they are always the most interesting characters. I liken it to painting: if you're playing the good guy, you get three colors: red, white and blue. But if you're the bad guy, you get the whole palette.
Given that most movies are bad, and that there are whole categories and sub-categories of badness - the sequel, the Madonna Movie, the Friday 13th Series, or Movies Starring John Travolta Before Pulp Fiction - it is almost impossible to choose a single film for worst movie of all time. But strangely, I do have a nomination and I believe it is actually the worst movie ever made. It is Boxing Helena. The director is David Lynch's daughter, and the film comes with the almost insane-making faults that the family connection might imply.
Let's say you would see me in a lot more big movies had I done movies that I'd been asked to do playing bad guys. Now that I have a child on the way, I think that you'll probably be seeing me play more bad guys. If that's what's going to put bread on the table, that's what I'm going to be doing.
I've played a lot of bad guys over the years, a lot of hardcore guys. At the same time, I've done a lot of comedy.
I'm not particularly an expert on the genre. Correct me if I'm wrong, but usually you see most of the super-villain in his villainous role. He's the Green Goblin, or whatever various bad guys in Batman, or something like that. It's the excessive, larger than life, cartoon-ish, costumed character that is the personification of evil and has to be destroyed.
I was played the villain so much because I was bigger and stronger than most, and they cast me as the villain everywhere I went.
You know, the best-laid plans of mice and men... I like playing bad guys, and I don't have a problem doing that. They're interesting characters, and there's as many different kinds of bad guys as there are good guys - they're rich, they're strong, they're powerful, and so that's fine with me.
There are so many of these young-adult movies with these cold guys who act like jerks to girls but are hiding soft sentiments. But in the real world most guys who act like jerks are jerks. Generally they are. I spent a lot of high school thinking that horrible guys must be very sensitive and interesting and it's not true.
I think most actors would say some of the most fun roles are when you're evil, and that's been really exciting to be the bad guy in a lot of scenarios. Because when you're 12, you don't get to play the villain too often.
I dated a guy who played bad guys in movies all the time, and I think he was just a bad guy.
My general philosophy of playing bad guys, which I've sort of done, you know, half the time is, you know, very few people who we view as bad guys get out of bed and think, 'What evil, terrible thing am I going to do today?' Most people see their motivations as justified - as, you know, justifying whatever they do.
Amitabh Bachchan played the role I was supposed to play in 'Saat Hindustani' but I cannot say he got his first film because of me. He had already been cast in the film, but was playing a different role.
I've never seen a Western that was really truthful. Most are just morality plays. Good guys and bad guys - and the good guys always win, whereas in reality most of the sheriffs were as bad as the gangsters they were after.
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