Roles Quotes

You could say I'm a character actress. Or maybe a character actress who does peculiar, interesting lead roles. Does that make sense?

I had my moments of being humiliated, and then I had moments of doing something humiliating. I'm glad I lived out both roles.

I've had to fight for roles and I've lost a hundred roles, but 'Smoking' and 'Smith' were phone calls. That's the dream.

It's just interesting that people don't really know about the roles that I play that are darker. I kind of do a huge blend of really big light things but also really dark indie things, and it just sort of happens to work out that way.

The choices of roles I made had to do with educating and entertaining. And as a result I found myself working only every two or three years.

If I were to wait only for roles that clarify my racial makeup, I'd be waiting for a very, very long time.

I'm not a dark person at all, so those roles are the most challenging. I don't think I'm necessarily drawn to dark things. It just seems to work out that way.

I remember that it was never that difficult for me to get a director to look up and pay attention to me. Mind you, I don't know if that's necessarily charm. But I've played roles where my character has to be charming and I've found it quite easy to do. I think some of it is in my bones, but some of it is more deliberate.

You should learn to be happy with what you have. Besides, the fact that I'm not a huge star has allowed me to pick and choose the roles I want to do, not the ones some person sitting in a studio office thinks I should do.

The truth is, after Boys Don't Cry, I realized how few and far between the great roles are. I am beyond thankful for finding Million Dollar Baby.

Last week I was in London at an awards show, then I flew home and was in an RV park with my wife and kids in our motorhome, this week I'm in NY doing a charity event, and tomorrow I'll be coaching my daughters soccer practice. I guess the range of roles I play on film stem from the range of roles I play in real life.

People told me I couldn't kill Nicholson, so I cast him in two roles and killed him off twice.

That's double-edged: it's amazing that they're bringing me in and showing people new ideas, and at the same time it's a little hard because seventy percent of the time or even higher I'm not going to get those roles.

For most of my career, I've played roles that were written for other actresses.

I happen to be one who believes very strongly that state and local governments have their proper roles.

I want to have roles in English.

In New York I was always offered the hot, sexy roles. But in L.A. I was offered the plain, dowdy roles. It says a lot about the difference between the coasts.

We did many of our own stunts. We had our hands full. In fact, the roles were physically demanding.

I read the script, and I knew it was a good part. It was written for a white actor. That's what I'm up against - I have to try to make roles happen for me that aren't written black.

I've always been into films. I've been offered lots of films but they've always been these very stereotypical roles. They wanted me to play some gangster or street guy, or pimp, drug addict.

When I was thinking of casting this, I thought, What roles would Sellers be playing now?

As soon as I became proactive in producing my own stuff, I started getting other roles.

I remember feeling that. I couldn't do, nor did I want to do, the kinds of roles I'd been doing.

People were confused by me, and at first I was auditioning a lot for the crazy characters or the victim, someone who'd been attacked. Which is great, because usually those are the best acting roles.

I try to explain to people that you get the roles that are right when they're right. If you have a nerd character but you're kind of a cool guy, you're probably not going to get the nerd part. The nerd is going to get the nerd part. You know, someone like me.

In my career, there have been roles I haven't taken because someone involved with the project gave me a bad vibe. I don't care how much money is on the table: No job is worth feeling uneasy every day.

I tend to turn down roles that are too much like me, what I think is most like me anyhow, because I'm me all the time and I'm sick of it.

Of all the roles I've done on the stage, I'm partial to Cyrano de Bergerac.

Hmm, limelight... No, I'm not Sienna Miller or Angelina Jolie. I'm very lucky and happy, but I still find it very difficult to get good scripts and good roles. It's really a jungle out there.

In microbiology the roles of mutation and selection in evolution are coming to be better understood through the use of bacterial cultures of mutant strains.