Terrence Howard knows that it’s all about swagger when playing a villain. In his new film, Dead Man Down, the Oscar-nominated actor used his style to depict a true bad guy.
“The whole thing for me in the character was the hair,” he said in an interview with Moviefone. “That was my decision with the director. When he’s trying to conduct business, he wants to be a goody-goody boy, so he combs his hair and gives it a little Superman swirl and all of that. But when he gets ready to go and be a bad guy, he goes back to that slicked-back hair and that monster he was when he was 19, 20 and making his bones on the street.”
So, while Howard (Hustle and Flow, Iron Man) uses his style to help fully flesh out his characters, he’s not one of those actors that believes in writing a back story for his characters.
“No, you find a foundation for what happens. Yeah, you can go and say, ‘Oh, he went to this school…’ No, bull,” he said. “Look, this is who I am right now, doing this. Why would I make these choices? But it’s still based around my own core principles. And bullsh*t what any actor says: ‘I just made a character out of scratch.’ No, you didn’t. We are too selfish in our nature to let go of our nature.”
Dead Man Down opens in theaters Friday, March 8.
