Challenging Preconceptions Quotes

In 2013, I started playing Fara Sherazi on 'Homeland.' I love playing her, not just because she's a strong woman, but because for the first time, a Muslim woman is being portrayed on television as a regular person, rather than a cliche or collection of stereotypes.

I always prided myself on trying to break the stigma of the 'dumb jock.'

What I love about the East End is that there's a great perseverance, determination and courage. What I dislike about it is that there is sometimes a celebration of ignorance.

When I was making 'Satya', many people said that nobody would like to watch such dirty people. But, when the film worked, the same people said it was so real that they could actually smell it!

Theater will cast in a more open way; Denzel Washington might play Richard III. Television and film don't really cast openly like that. The theater world has always been a leader in diversity.

I'm about challenging people. Like, properly challenging them and their assumptions.

First, you have stereotypes, and that will be the black drug dealer, the east Asian kung fu master, the Middle Eastern terrorist in 'True Lies.' Then you have stuff that takes place on culturally specific terrain, that engages with it, but actually subverts assumptions. 'Smashes' stereotypes. That's where I've come into the game.

It was great to be able to play a hero in 'The Magnificent Seven' in a film industry where Asian actors are often limited to playing a villain.

Even fake news tries to convince us of its reality, but it does so mostly by appealing to your preconceived notions, your shared biases, or your prejudice. How to do the opposite? To create a sense of the real and then challenge your biases. I think that is my favourite aspect of writing, and that is what I've tried to do in 'The Lovers.'

The idea of telling a story in reverse destabilises your ordinary moral reactions. That's one of the points of art - to challenge your preconceptions.

I don't mind being stereotyped in some way and playing certain kinds of guys, but if I can find something to occasionally get a break from that, that would be nice. And I feel like I manage to.

What I'm interested in doing now is to go and give voices that are not being heard a platform and to sort of bring people into people's homes that you think you may hate or despise.

I don't want to push barriers myself. You go to see Joan Rivers to see barriers being pushed. You watch 'Little Britain' to see barriers being pushed.

Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.

'Vicky Donor' dealt with a taboo topic, but it was a family entertainer and not cringe-worthy, which helped make it a commercial success.

The intellectual's struggle to deny the obvious is never more desperate than when reality is unpleasant and at variance with his preconceptions and when full acknowledgment of it would undermine the foundations of his intellectual worldview.

The first problem for all of us, men and woman, is not to learn, but to unlearn. We are filled with the popular wisdom of several centuries just past, and we are terrified to give it up. Patriotism means obedience, age means wisdom, woman means submission, black means inferior: these are preconceptions imbedded so deeply in our thinking that we honestly may not know that they are there.

I quite like the idea of performing in front of people that don't like me.

'Dating In The Dark' is a unique show that is going to bring something very new to the table for the audiences. The format will make people look beyond the general dating norms of our society: who knows, maybe even reinvent them.

I'm going to prove I belong. There's a lot of skepticism about the type of player I am, where I come from, the University of Wyoming, obviously.

In fact, our need to feel like big shots keeps us wedded to inadequate perspectives on the world, keeps us from exploring and dealing with what doesn't fit into those perspectives. We should be trying to formulate a bigger, richer perspective to accommodate what doesn't fit, but no matter how beautiful and true that new perspective looks to us, we should always be prepared to acknowledge that it doesn't accommodate something we haven't yet confronted.

I've just been really lucky to not be too much of a stereotype.

The perception that 'Indians can't make superhero films' needs to change. We can make superhero films in the budgets given to us.

I try to take roles that don't fall within the parameters of any Asian stereotype.

'Unjustly Maligned' is a neat idea for a podcast. Antony Johnston invites a believer to make the case for a cultural artefact that consensus tends to deride.