It was a shock to see Justin Long, resident Nice Guy in offbeat indie comedies, break bad so brilliantly in 2022’s Barbarian. The eerie horror film used our collective trust in Long against us, reintroducing him as a narcissist so clueless that you can’t help but root — just a little — for his downfall. Like so many actors who’ve embraced the dark side, Long doesn’t see AJ as an outright villain. He worked hard to find an inner humanity, however suppressed, to make his performance and his character feel real.
“Labeling somebody ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is an interesting thing to me,” Long tells Inverse. “It’s all perception. Even somebody as bad as a murderer, I’m so curious about what they really believe of themselves, how they feel about their behavior, and how they justify it.”
