Daily Inspiration Quote by Jeri Ryan

Messy people are better material because they come with built-in weather. When Jeri Ryan says “the more screwed up, the better,” she’s not confessing a taste for melodrama so much as naming the engine of watchability: contradiction. A “good” person who reliably makes “good” choices is morally soothing but dramatically inert. A screwed-up character, by contrast, is a machine for surprise. They want one thing, do another, and then have to live with the wreckage. That gap between desire and behavior is where an actor gets to work.

From an actor’s perspective, dysfunction isn’t just edgy seasoning; it’s access. Trauma, obsession, denial, compulsion, vanity - these aren’t quirky traits, they’re internal systems that generate stakes in every scene. Even a mundane line can carry the tremor of a history the character is trying not to reveal. Ryan’s phrasing also carries a sly industry critique: film and TV reward characters who are “relatable,” and contemporary relatability often means damage presented as personality. The entertainment machine has learned that audiences bond faster through flaws than virtues, because flaws create narrative debt. You keep watching to see if the character pays it off or doubles down.

Context matters, too. Ryan’s career is tied to roles where identity is contested and rebuilt, most famously Seven of Nine, a character defined by fracture and recovery. Her quote defends complexity against the flattening pressures of branding, likability metrics, and tidy arcs. “Screwed up” is a blunt phrase, but it’s also an artistic permission slip: let the character be difficult, inconsistent, even hard to love. That’s where the human comes through.