Casting Issues Quotes

I am half Puerto Rican, a quarter German and a quarter black. That was always a big issue for me - being mixed race - because casting directors tended to be very like, 'OK, are you Hispanic for this role?' 'Or is she going to be African American?'

By the time I was 14, I was about six foot. I remember going into auditions, and they'd look at how tall I was and say, 'Well, you're taller than the lead actor, so there's no way we can cast you.'

I'm always cast in these strange men... that's not me, really.

I'm a little concerned I'm always going to be playing a black guy, you know what I'm saying?

I was afraid that I'd be typecast as the token firang. That happened initially. Now, I am acting in 'Noises Off' and 'Menagerie,' where all of us are playing British and American characters. That makes me feel better.

I often have scripts sent to me with allegedly Scottish characters where I end up telling them, 'You're going to have to rethink this whole thing!'

There are no Asian leading men in Hollywood. There's not an Asian Ryan Gosling or an Asian Brad Pitt.

I'm personally fed up with people seeing women and girls cast as victims.

Every single cast has a couple bad eggs, or that person that everyone is making fun of or doesn't like.

Do I think the West End relies too heavily on star names? Yes, I do, and it can result in miscasting and sub-standard stuff. Not always, but occasionally.

[On the racial backlash about Hunger Games casting]: "People should have ignored the five racist idiots.

At a certain point, I had to be like, 'I will not do any more auditions with a Middle Eastern accent.'

Any comedic roles that I've gone out for usually end up going to a white woman or a gay man instead.

I've auditioned for normal characters. But I never get cast.

I was up at Big Sur with Christopher Reeve and Christine Lahti, doing this woman in a big fat-suit - Mrs. Bassett in Tennessee Williams' Summer And Smoke - and my husband was in the show too, playing Lahti's fiancée. Every night he'd be proposing to beautiful Christine Lahti, and I'd barrel onstage in this fat-suit. I hated it! But I did it, because by then I knew that that was my casting.

Is typecasting really a problem?

Hollywood, they make up these Latinos because they have a certain physical type or a certain name or whatever... It's not that easy. It's like me wanting to do a movie with an American actor, and I say, 'Hey listen, I have either Johnny Depp or Carrot Top.'

I don't want to get typecast and I've been doing a lot of stuff to make that happen and not be the case.

A lot of directors don't really like actors.

I'm kind of in a middle space, being marketed as a biracial actor. Roles are written either stereotypically black, or they're written 'normal,' which is just code for white.

After Halle Berry does her films and Queen Latifah does her films, it's left to all the black, Latino and Asian actresses to fight over a couple of roles. I opted for some TV. There's just not a ton of work in film.

I... had guys on the set who didn't like me... they weren't interested in the cold character.

If I played a vamp I would be rejected by the audience outright.

As a person who wants to see and believe in the story, I don't think women at age 50 are able to sing young girls.

I think as a young actress, it's very rare that you read something where you're not either 'the girl' or there to serve some romantic purpose in a male dominated cast.