Real life face, on screen heel.

[Nr1Humanoid]

Why is it that wrestling's legitimately kind and decent guys always manages to be best at playing the most despicable and hateful villains on screen?

On the opposite side of the coin you have real life assholes, whom always manages to play cleancut faces better than most.

You would think it would be he other way.

I am hardly a psychiatrist but maybe they simply enjoy doing all the things they are little capable of in day to day life.

[schma]

Sometimes playing someone unlike you is actually easier. I haven't acted in years (just high school and university plays and shit) but some of my favourite characters were assholes and I'm generally considered a pretty good guy. There's something freeing about playing a character who is nothing like you, especially when it elicits the response you're looking for. Even those playing themselves turned up to 11 are still playing a character. I feel that playing the opposite for some would actually be easier.

[The Dark Order Inferno]

Heels traditionally make less money than faces because kids and casuals are less inclined to buy their merch so like a lot of hard work, it's something that's unloaded onto rookies, green hosses and team players, and the team players are the ones who do the best job at it, do the best job at making the face look good so tend to last in the role.

The 90-00s cool heels showed how important it is for heels to be team players, you had Hulk Hogan and Triple H work as heels and they ended up not giving an inch if they could possibly avoid it and everything suffered in the long run.

[Aceorton]

I wonder if there's some element of "getting out of your work clothes" when it comes to this. If you've been playing a jerk all night/week/year, when you're off the clock, maybe you have a need to go the other direction. You desire people to know "real you" as a decent person to make up for "show you" getting hated on constantly.

And if you've been caged in as a hand-slapping, baby-kissing hero all night/week/year, when you're off the clock, maybe you're more inclined to break some rules or take some attitude with people or even act like a complete scumbag, since "show you" can't do that. Obviously doesn't apply to everyone (e.g., Ricky Steamboat, Tito Santana).

I feel like the babyface "perks" of constant public validation and female attention probably corrupt some people, too.

[tirtefaa]

I may have a hypothesis for this perception.

I'm going to wager that faces get approached far more often than heels do when it comes to autographs, pictures, meet and greet and so forth. Because of this, they're probably less inclined to be engaging in every interaction. And because there's more interactions, it's more likely that a fan is going to have a bad experience and speak out against it later.

Whereas back in the day, as long as they weren't keeping kayfabe, heels probably appreciated any fan that came up to them and wasn't attempting to stab them.

[jason1980s]

I was friends with Nikolai Volkoff from 2011 to his passing. He's one of the top examples of bad guy on TV and good guy in real life.

He lived in his wife's home town which is a small town in Baltimore County. It's almost like a Mayberry type of town. He lived a regular life style there and it was easy for him to befriend people in the town and in state. At various times there were four fans he was especially close to and all but one lived in Maryland and he would drive us three (at different times of his/our lives) to shows where we were treated like royalty for being his friend. He was so well respected that even some of the more un-fan friendly guys would go above and beyond when I met them.

He worked for Baltimore County for over 20 years, starting with the most well known job as the code inspector job, then moving on to a Police Athletic League and finally as a maintenance man for a park's department.

He learned trades in his home country so knew how to fix things. When he was a code inspector he would always try to find a way to help the person he had to investigate. He mowed an old ladies lawn to help her. He knew how to do electrical work so he fixed the faulty wiring in a guys house so it passed inspection.
At the PAL, he answered phones and helped kids with homework and sports activities in the after school program for children whose parent's worked.

[Cranjis McBasketball]

Like, all of them? Even the wrestlers seem to agree the heels were actually the nicest guys and the faces are generally the bastards.

I think it was in the Darkside episode, Brody's wife explained how they'd be in the car, making kissy faces, "I'll miss you sweetie, love you so much, kiss kiss", then Brody get out of the car, would pull his hair out of his ponytail and run through the airport like a f***ing lunatic.

[This Player Hating Mothman]

I don't think there's anything tat deep to all of it, because for every example that holds up there's an example of the opposite. A guy like John Cena who played face for almost his entire career and gave so much of his time to sick kids. DiBiase, who was one supposed to be u pheld as a great example of a good guy who played a nasty heel, but who ended up defrauding a state welfare fund with his sons for millions. Vince is a genuine all-time great heel and it turns out that a lot of his more 'grounded' heelish deeds weren't only how he actually is, but in some cases excuses to make the same women he'd sexually harass off-camera have to play it up to him on-camera as a direct part of the harassment in play.

At the end of the day, these people play characters. Some of them have the range to extend well past anything they are as people because they're good at what they do.