Limited Roles Quotes

The trap for an actor is that you become too successful at what you're trying to do, and you can find yourself stuck there.

I was reading through endless junk scripts that were being sent my way. Typically the roles were to play his wife or his girlfriend - leading roles for women were few and far between.

I was always typecast as a Latina.

When I was young, I dreamt of being a starlet in Hollywood. But there comes a point in every African American's life when you realize the limitations, that you could only play maids or some little supporting role. Even Lena Horne couldn't get good parts.

Until recently, Hollywood offered only a handful of roles to actors of color. The majority of my opportunities have fallen into two categories: Scary Black and Funny Black.

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

As an artist, program directors always want to put you in a little box.

I think you get the parts that people are comfortable with seeing you play.

Some of the biggest and most popular movie stars in the world are limited or have constantly done what they do really well. Being versatile is not necessarily the greatest quality for an actor.

I think that I've been pigeon-holed by virtue of the fact that I've spent so much time in front of a green screen.

In 'Night At The Museum 3,' with Ben Stiller, I was only given a couple of lines. If you are in guys' comedies, it's not like you are ever going to just get handed some jokes and a brilliant role.

That's really just the worst part of life really, you get bracketed somewhere and the next thing you know people are saying, 'No. No. That's not the type. Get me so and so.' I'm not a type. I'm an actor.

Hollywood does not write parts for people like me, an elderly gentleman, and when they find out you're crippled, forget about it. No, I'll never work again.

I'm definitely more attracted to chaos than to order. The point is, I find the female roles out there very cliche. If we are limited to being only lovers or mothers, we are limiting ourselves.

One of the things about being a minority actor is that you don't have that opportunity as some of your counterparts to keep that flow, to constantly be going from one thing to the other, so when you see really great performances out there by some black folks, you know it's coming from somewhere deep, because they just don't work as much.

When I was younger, you get pigeonholed in parts, which is understandable.

On network TV, I'm still Phoebe to people, and it would be hard to convince them otherwise in the bright lights of a sitcom.

Traditionally, royal females who have not had the luck to become queens regnant have been granted very limited roles. They have been expected to look pretty, be discreet, do charitable good deeds, and - if married to princes or kings - be quietly supportive and, above all, fertile.

I think every character actor at some stage likes to carry a film. It can be extremely liberating to just come in for a scene or two and do your thing. But I find it frustrating if I'm just doing little bits here and there for too long.

I find there aren't that many options as an actor.

I read so many scripts, and it's not really exciting to just be the girlfriend.

If you're considered a beauty, it's hard to be accepted doing anything but standing around.

When I started, it was all meter maids or the sassy nurse, or the sassy receptionist in the hospital. And I felt like: Are those the only jobs that large, black women have?

With Asian-Americans actors, specifically, there's been fewer opportunities for them in TV and film and fewer that have the ability to actually make a career out of it. It becomes a bit of a chicken and egg situation, where they're like, 'Oh, but they're not famous names,' but they haven't had a chance to be in anything yet, either.

In the years since I worked with John Hughes, there were many years where I literally had hundred of doors slammed in my face because I wasn't that kid anymore, and I wasn't a character actor, and I wasn't a leading man, and I wasn't whatever Hollywood was looking for.