If you play an evil character it’s gotta stick a little.
And if you’re a character-actor who always gets the evil role. If you play 100 evil guys. Then 100X moreso.
You get into the evil role. See the world through evil eyes and evil motivations.
And over time it’s gotta bend your personality towards real evilness. Right?
I suppose you could google evil-character-actors. 20 years later, how many got arrested for something heinous.
What do you think?
EDIT
Put more generally : Can habits gained in one context bleed over into another context?
Yes.
Do they?
Possibly. With increasing probability as the habit becomes stronger. And there’s self-awareness to consider. And how much the habit clashes with the new context.
It would be kind of interesting to see if there’s a ratio of evil characters to their actors doing crimes. I mean the most obvious that comes to mind is Kevin spacey. Though it doesn’t seem to be higher rates for celebs that play evil characters vs ones that play lovable good characters. Least most don’t consider Bill Cosby or OJ Simpson to have played particularly evil characters. So I’d say in general money and fame cause an increase in likelyness of being evil, the on screen persona doesn’t seem to be a huge contributing factor.
That would make a nice little research project.