Career Restrictions Quotes

I'd always ask my grandma, who was so, so smart, why she didn't work, and she would explain that her parents didn't approve of her working after she had children. She didn't feel like she had choices.

There wasn't much white people would allow us to do in those days. You could be a schoolteacher or an athlete to get away from the manual labor and servant-type jobs, but there wasn't much else they were going to allow you [to] do.

As a journalist, I would talk to writers, directors, creative people, and discover that for an awful lot of them, the moment they became successful, that was all they were allowed to do. So you end up talking to the bestselling science-fiction author who wrote a historical-fiction novel that everybody loved, but no one would publish.

As an African, there are certain professions your family want you to do or are willing to sign off. Being in the medical professional, as a doctor, pharmacist, a nurse, or being an engineer - those are the only professions allowed!

When I was little, I thought about becoming a lawyer like my parents, and my mother would always tell me, "You can do anything you want - except be a lawyer."

If one day I have a daughter and my daughter wants to be a model, I would never let her!

I don't subscribe to the thinking that being typecast is a bad thing.

If you've got hips, you can't be a gymnast or dancer. That ruled me out.

Sure, it can happen that the director sees you in a particular genre, and they like your work in that genre; they tend to think that you can only do well in that genre.

Looking back to when I joined, some areas of policing were barred for women. So you couldn't do full public order training, you couldn't carry a firearm as a woman in the Met until 1988, there were no women dog handlers, and there was probably one woman in CID.

My big thing is that I always get typecast.

There was no such thing as a solo career in East Germany. You had to get the best orchestra job that you could.

You can easily become boxed in and be only identified with musicals or plays.