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Admittedly I usually take a back seat and let other chatty players lead.
But if I do chime in, I like to ask questions about characters, places, etc because sometimes I see a DM has put a lot of work into something and wants to talk about it.
Some DMs really like this, others I catch off guard and they clearly have to improvise a back story. Either way its amusing.
Hard question, because different characters fit well with different groups.
Some groups appreciate the very flawed characters and chaos gremlins who will throw a spanner into the works when everyone is least expecting it; some get frustrated by that. Some like edgy, anti-social, or anti-authority characters who chafe at any kind of order or social organization. Some groups just want the very different, but ultimately compatible characters who become fire-forged friends along the way and get annoyed by deeper intracharacter incompatibilities.
It also depends on where you fall on the conflict <-> cooperation scale. I've played a sociopathic necromancer who looked down on all the other PCs, but stuck along with the party because he had good reason to. I was careful to never actually obstruct other players' goals or actions, but there was plenty of acerbic banter and sneaking around to be had.
My go-to is either the city guard that is one week away from retirement and is really too old for this shit, or the local drunken guy who doesn't understand a thing but is happy for you, or sorry that it happened.
First one is for serious campaigns (although I like raising death flags for shits and giggles), the other one for one-shots I don't care enough to entertain the story at anything more than surface level.
I've played a devious, scheming, money-hungry rogue. I've played an aloof know-it-all wizard. I've played a hippie-dippy can't-we-all-just-get-along bard. I've played a killjoy by-the-book paladin. I've played a 60 IQ barbarian. I've played a problematically-curious artificer. I've played a brooding warlock.
To me, the whole point is to play different characters differently. I tend to swing pretty far from one campaign to the next.
Yup, I've enjoyed my 'needs to protect everyone but is socially awkward' half-orc fighter, my 'I'm going to die soon anyway so screw it' tiefling sorcerer, my 'I need to prove myself by wracking up a kill count' orc monk, and my 'I was trapped in the astral plane for a century and attained enlightenment during my spirit journey' human druid, and of course my 'I couldn't be a wizard so they fused me with an ooze symbiote' half-elf oozemancer equally.
Though I do tend to be the initiator. Parties can really get lost in overplanning in my experience, so I'll often have to get the ball rolling. Like when we stand outside a room and discuss 5 plans on how to enter when the DM clearly has an encounter prepared, I'll jump in with plan A. Or the time we debated on how to save the prince as we were fleeing from a coup for an actual real-life 30 minutes so I decided to cast Disguise Self as him and step into the crowded street.