Daily Inspiration Quote by Shawn Ashmore

There is a delicious career-side honesty baked into Ashmore's line: villainy is the fun job, and actors know it. "Great" lands with the offhand relief of someone escaping the polite cage of the likable lead. Heroes are usually written to be admirable; villains get to be specific. They drive the scene, chew the dialogue, make the choices that the story actually pivots on. Ashmore's phrasing carries a wink toward that imbalance: the so-called bad guy often has the best day at work.

The second clause, "even though I've only gotten to do it a few times", is where the real subtext hums. It's half brag, half complaint, and mostly a quiet diagnosis of typecasting. Ashmore built public recognition playing an earnest, controlled figure in the X-Men franchise; the industry tends to file that face and that energy under "reliable good guy". So the line is also a small act of self-advocacy: a reminder to casting directors that his range extends beyond steady heroism.

There's a broader cultural context here, too: modern audiences are increasingly allergic to spotless protagonists and increasingly hungry for complicated antagonists. Prestige TV taught viewers to root for monsters with backstories; superhero IP normalized moral grayness as a selling point. Ashmore isn't just praising villain roles. He's pointing at the part of the machine that makes them rare, and admitting - in a breezy way that keeps it from sounding bitter - that the most interesting versions of an actor don't always get requested.