This paper presents the mechanisms proposed by a generic cognitive architecture for virtual characters with emotional influenced behaviors, called cognitiva, to maintain behavior control at will without giving up the richness provided by emotions. This architecture, together with a progressive specification process for its application, have been used successfully to model 3D intelligent virtual actors for virtual storytelling. 1 The Role of Emotions in Virtual Storytelling Traditionally it was considered that intelligent behaviors could only be produced from pure rational reasoning processes. However, everyday experience shows that pure rationality fails when trying to explain many human behaviors, in which the emotional component has a decisive weight. Although quite a lot of efforts have been made to consider emotions in computational models of cognitive processes, emotion is still perceived by many as a non-desirable quality for a computational system [1]. Emotion, mood, personal...