W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

I think it's pretty crazy to say you've been typecast at the age of 20 before you've even really started getting going.

At about 40, the roles started slowing down. I started getting offers to play mothers and grandmothers.

I was very surprised that for a while I could only get cast as straight. It was that way for a few years.

Character roles definitely age better than your ingenues. You don't get to keep doing that.

I was warned not to do it. Actors who play Jesus are supposed to have a hard time getting other roles to follow, but I felt this was a myth. After all, how can you be typecast as Christ?

It's not so much that I'd like to play a raunchy character, but I would like to play someone my own age. I'm always playing down, but I guess it's good because it means I've got a longer life in my acting career.

I'm just a pack mule. I've played leads and I've played character roles. Any actress in Hollywood will tell you as your age climbs, the leads thin.

I don't really worry about being typecast much. I mean, everyone in Hollywood is typecast to a degree.

You get thought of in terms of your last job. So if my last job is that of a meat cleaver-wielding character, I will hardly be cast as some benign, older gentleman.

But, having said that, believe me, as you get older, the parts dry up. They get less and less.

I was a theater man, so I was never in the situation of being a handsome Hollywood leading man, and then having to age.

I found myself in the doldrums in the early Nineties. I was too old to play the dolly bird any longer and I looked too young to play a woman of my real age. No one ever saw me as the aunt, mother or grandmother.

There's a certain cruelty to being on a big screen as your eyelids start to sag and your hair falls out and turns gray that you either have to be able to handle or not. What you can't do is try to force yourself into roles that you could have played or would have played ten years earlier.

This idea of the world expecting you to remain an ingenue forever - it's a very short shelf life if you're going to commit to that as your career, and I knew that early.

It can be difficult to get cast as something that is off-center from you, and my biggest fear is to be typecast.

Now that I'm out there and it's known that I'm trans, I think that sometimes might hinder my opportunity in snagging a big cis role.

The main fear about growing old as an actor is not losing the looks. I never had any to speak of, and what I had I've still got, but losing the memory is another matter.

When I was a child actor, I had the fear that I was going to be cast as the tree.

I suppose, when you start up in acting, you hope to be given challenges, and you always have dreams about the things you could do and couldn't do, but normally we get pigeon-holed a little bit, as we go on in our careers.

As I've gotten older, the parts have diminished. I liked it when I was younger, I could always play the lead in the movie and I could do all the romantic scenes with the women, and it was fun and I liked to play that. Now, I'm older and I'm reduced to playing the backstage doorman or the uncle or something. I don't really love that so occasionally, when a part comes up, I'll play it.

It's true that old actors don't die, their parts get smaller. You're less likely to get the part, many parts, if you're playing people your age as opposed to people who are younger. There are fewer parts around.

At this point in my career, I can stand shoulder to shoulder with an actor my age who has chosen to do really awful things, and he will get a job over me.

The only reason I ever thought about retiring from the front part of the camera as opposed to the back is sometimes you think, "How many roles are there for someone my age?"

Being pigeonholed is the death of all actors.

The same thing I applied to football, I applied to trying to be an actor and hopefully it came off well.