There's no such thing as senseless violence, according to the one who commits it. Characters who kill or torture without at least an internal justification are crazy, not evil. You don't have a reason to kill people in the party or at random, so you don't. This doesn't make you nonevil.
Also remember that just because you're Evil doesn't mean you're a villain. Many Evil characters have no ambitions higher than their own survival and/or comfort; they don't aspire to great power, nor to purge the world of the target of their hate. They're just trying to get by, not so different from the rest of us.
The traditional list of Seven Deadly Sins was originally compiled not so much as a list of inherent sins, but a list of reasons that people sin. This makes it a great source of motives for Evil characters. I prefer to expand the list to nine, adding Fear as Wrath's twin in the fight-or-flight reflex, and Despair because it was actually in the original list; Sloth replaced it later.
Avarice: The key to happiness is having things. I will have it all.
Envy: I deserve it, not them. I will have it from them.
Gluttony: Pity those not at the top of the food chain. I will never be in that position.
Lust: I want to do it all, and I will let nothing get in my way.
Pride: I must be better then them: so much so that my superiority is never even questioned.
Sloth: I just don't want to do it. Let them do it for me. If they refuse, make them do it for me.
Wrath: They will never hurt me again. I will punish them for what they did, and leave them unable to do it to anyone else.
Fear: They must not be allowed to hurt me. (Note the lack of an again here: this is one of the big differentiators between Fear and Wrath, but it can make a huge difference in the character).
Despair: I just want the pain to end. Giving it to others helps.
Also keep in mind that these are core motivations. Any one of them will need to be elaborated upon. What is it? Who are they? How does the character plan to achieve this goal? Also worth noting is the lengths that your character goes to to hide her motives. Evil characters often prey upon one another's weaknesses, and while Wrath-type characters might not worry about seeming weak due to their motives, Sloth-type and Fear-type characters likely would. These folks are likely to construct a facade, often but not always based on Wrath, as a matter of posturing.
Your character sounds like a Wrath-type, with a focus on the undead. Because her main focus is on something that is not so amenable to the survival of humanity in general, she can get along decently well in society, and even be a very useful sort of person to have around. Some might even mistake her for heroic. But she has a twisted fight-or-flight reflex: any slight or injury, real or imagined, runs the risk of touching on that trauma, for reasons that make sense only to your character (if they even make sense to her). She might lash out disproportionately at small threats, or even against things she mistakenly believes to be threats, but are not.
To make your question short, and to see if I understood it correctly, we're talking about a player who made his character a certain one and roleplays it entirely different. You added that you think that it comes from inexperience, and that he created this character after you said "no" to some "freak-character"-ideas. You want to help him roleplay the character he created.
As I see it, this problem is made from two smaller ones. The first is that he doesn't see his character as interesting because the character "is normal and normal is boring". The second is that you wanna help him understand why the way he plays the character does not fit the story-world of your game.
Helping him understand that "normal is not boring
This is the more important problem, as it stands in the basis of the entire problem. If he'll see that normal characters can be interesting his "anti-persona" will perish and he'll roleplay a normal character and not a freak one. The main trick here is to show him that normal characters are not entirely normal, i.e. "no person is like the others". In order for that to work, we need to give the character depth.
The easiest way to give depth to a character is through internal conflicts. Having goals and all is nice, but without something that blocks oneself from achieving them it is far less interesting. First thing to do is to go over his character's background and see if he implemented there an internal conflict for his character. If so, show it to him and talk with him about it. If no, sit with him and help him to come with one. The internal conflict doesn't have to be extravagant, but it needs to be there. An example one might be that he loves Vincent's sister but secretly hates Vincent himself, or another like Loves the sister but thinks that he's not good enough for there. I'll take the second one as an example for this section.
The conflict gives us a few things, a few added benefits. It gives the character 2 conflicting goals: "Get the sister and prove that I'm worthy". Now, with those two we also get a kind of an achieving-plan: "If I'll show her that I'm worthy, by getting something amazing done, she'll want me and I'll be able to get her". More than that, the character gets the knowledge that each advancement in order to achieve one goal will drive the other one to the far end.
But the first conflict is even more interesting. The character here has the knowledge that he needs the brother in order to save his lover, but he just can't stand being near the brother. He'll drive the mission onward for two reasons but he'll have doubts about his lover- if he'll marry her he'll be stuck with this brother of hers.
To make long story short, simple conflicts can show the player that even normal characters are interesting and unique. When combined with goals they force the character to take certain steps along the roads, to commit certain actions along the way, that he won't want to do but will make him doubt himself and question himself and see that his problem are far more interesting than those of every freak that he'll encounter.
Another nice way to help him see the importance of conflict is through showing him and analyzing with him certain protagonists that are normal people, from the stories and movies and series (of any form)that he likes. He'll see quite quickly that the conflicts make them interesting.
But he may say that it is not enough. For that there are a few more literary tools that might help him see why normal people are interesting. The first one is having flaws (internal or external) and the second one is using "The Ghost".
Flawed characters are characters that just like normal people aren't perfect. Those flaws can be internal (self-doubts, for example, or a mild paranoia) or they can be external (they're look frightens ordinary people, for once, or a missing hand for the other). The idea is that the character has to deal with the flaw, and one day to find the strength to overcome it. The fight for the overcoming act makes the character far more interesting. A nice example of that can be seen in The Rain Man, where he learns at the end that he can count on strangers/"dumb" persons like he's brother. Another nice example can be seen in the story of The Ugly Duckling who although looking terrible learned to acknowledge himself and to accept the way he looks, to accept his difference.
"The Ghost" is an event from the past that just like a ghost haunts the character to this day. Again, trying to cope with it is what builds a deep character. One example for this can be seen in the movie Inception, where we literally have a ghost- Cob's wife. Another example for this can be seen in the movie Casablanca, where he has to deal with his broken relationship with Ilsa. This Ghost is far more interesting as the originator of the Ghost actually comes back to his life. In Frozen we see another kind of a Ghost- the act that one feels guilty about. Elsa actually killed her sister.
All of these techniques are there for one reason- to make regular people interesting, to give depth to the characters, to make them human beings with goals and drives and psychology.
Helping him see that his character doesn't fit the world
After he understands that he doesn't have to be a freak in order to be interesting, he will be far more understandable about playing a character that fits the world. Then, try to explain to him as calmly as you can what it is in the way he played his character that doesn’t fit the world.
Explain to him that the characters are in a world where being a freak is bad, where achieving one's goals is the ideal. Each and every one for himself, as the saying goes. Give him examples from the way he played his character and analyze with him, in a one-on-one conversation where his way of acting came from. Use the background he created to illustrate to him where your problem comes from.
Then ask him what problems he has with his character, and together try to find a solution. Maybe let him be just a little bit freakish. Maybe he needs to just create a different character. This is basically between you and him. After that show the updated character to the group and get their approval.
When combining those two, you'll get a player who his far more willing to both play the character while also seeing the problems with the way he played his character before.
Combining the two solutions
When combining the two solutions you get a better player, who understands for the future also how to create regular characters that are not freaks yet far more interesting than those freaks will ever be able to be. Furthermore, you get a player who is willing to play his character as written while still making the character fit into the world. Hope any of these helped you.
Best Answer
tl;dr: Outline the key broad behaviors, thought processes, and formative events and impressions that your character should have. Then build hard constraints (always this, never that) which replace any decisions you might make "in the moment". In cases that hard constraints don't touch, start from the key behaviors, thought processes, and formative events of your character and then reason primarily from those to decide on an action.
I've had some similar issues, though my context was different. For me, it's mainly from older video games that aren't complex enough to represent the details I wanted to express, or strongly favor a mathematically optimal approach to play which constantly tempt me to play "well" rather than in-character.
What has worked for me has been to think of behaviors (and in some cases, categories of behavior) which would be necessary for me to be playing my character as I intended. Then I develop these into either hard constraints (I must do X if the opportunity arises), or into "dilemmas" that I have to think through before taking my action. Every decision that I make is filtered through those considerations, and if one doesn't fit, I don't do that thing.
Most importantly, just because your character doesn't act as you would doesn't mean that they don't do anything at all. Some stronger development of how and why your character has the non-leader, non-decisive traits can not only tell you how your character shouldn't behave, but can also suggest how they should.
As an example of the hard constraint case, I like to try to represent famous sci-fi races in games of Master of Orion II. When I was playing as the Formics (from Ender's Game), it was mandatory to immediately go to war with the first other species I encountered. It's obviously not optimal play, but it's "correct" in terms of the roleplaying setup.
It's an action that both describes and is a consequence of how they thought about things, to the extent that they can't really be accurately roleplayed without it (in the context of recreating what is represented in the books, at least).
For the dilemma case (think of the choices available in a branching RPG like Mass Effect), I try to imagine a rationale or thought process that produces a character like the one I'm trying to portray, and then follow that line of reasoning to figure out what to do.
Even when I snap to a decision, the character doesn't, and my conclusion becomes one that the character considers but is heavily biased against. You don't necessarily need to understand it; your character does. If I can't build a persuasive case for the obvious-seeming action from my character's perspective, I won't take that action.
An implementation prop might help, both to remind you of your constraints and to refresh your reasoning for why they exist, and you can look at it every time you take an action or look at your character sheet. For your folk hero character, writing on an index card something like:
Harsh, but it sounds in-character and reminds you of how your character thinks. She might see flaws and opportunities as readily as you (linksassin) do, but she doesn't trust her judgment. She can even mirror your frustration at not acting optimally, but she is sure that acting optimally isn't something she can actually achieve through her own reasoning. If she immediately discounts the ideas which occur most naturally to her, what would she do instead?
How would you, at the table, change your behavior if you were certain that every d20 roll based on a decision you make would be a 1?