Mumbai, May 15 : Vijay Varma, who has been receiving a positive response to his work in the streaming series 'Dahaad', shared that he has spent his formative years being influenced by Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, Big B and SRK essaying negative parts with absolute finesse. The actor said that he naturally gravitates towards playing dark characters as they are quite a fertile territory for any actor. The actor shared that he loves playing negative parts as it gives him a better range and scope to put his skills to test. Talking about his affinity to grey characters, the actor told IANS: "Dark characters always excite me. I grew up on a staple diet of Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, who have played such incredibly delicious negative characters with aplomb." In the series, Vijay plays the role of a serial murderer, who targets young women from lower castes, manipulates them making them fall in love with him before he murders them. He added: "Even the earlier works of Amitabh Bachchan sir or Shah Rukh Khan sir, you see them playing morally dubious characters with shades of darkness and very human tendencies of anger and violence." "For all my earlier characters, they had some level of humanity to them even Hamza, he was abusive and toxic but he loved Badrunissa. But, for this character of mine in 'Dahaad', he has no humanity, he is cold-blooded. So, I went all out as an actor for this one." 'Dahaad' is streaming on Prime Video. /IANS