Roles are extremely finite, but human beings are infinite.
I'd like to do a little bit of everything. I think the only thing I can't do is a British accent, so that's out. No Shakespeare for me. Unless it's like one of those modern-day remakes.
Throughout my career I've played a lot of parts that might've been played by a man. They're human roles rather than specifically men or women. I've never been as hooked into that as a lot of women are, you know, like, 'There aren't enough roles for women.' There aren't necessarily a lot of good roles for anybody.
My career seems to have worked out OK, especially since I turned 40. I've always had a character part, mind you - I've never played the princess. But if you're used to doing that, it must be soul-destroying to hit 40 and suddenly find there's nothing for you to do.
The life of an actor is very hard irrespective of the continent you are in. It is doubly hard when you are only eligible for minority roles.
I realize that no one is going to come to me and ask me to be Julius Caesar or a romantic lead, but I think I'm a certain type of guy who looks a certain way, and that's just the reality of things.
If you're going to be born ugly and be an actor - the least they can do is let you play Lincoln.
When you're playing a supporting character, you don't really have a lot of control of the quality of the film.
There are two sides to being pigeonholed. There's, 'Oh, no, I'm going to be Chandler for the rest of my life,' but there's also the fact that getting to play Chandler opened up doors to me. It's now my job to find things that shake it up a little bit.
I played a Siamese girl from Thailand. I played an Arabian girl. I did a lot of American Indians. I never, ever was able to do a part without assuming some kind of accent.
If I'm going to be honest about it, I think men get to do this sort of thing all the time. You look at countless performances by great male actors who get to play the whole gamut of human emotions. Women aren't regularly allowed to do that, and I don't know why people are so frightened by it.
Could you ever call me a 'leading man?' Not really. It's not that I don't want leading man roles, but there's only so many, and they want Tom Hanks, not 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?"
I read so many scripts, and it's not really exciting to just be the girlfriend.
I don't really worry about being typecast much. I mean, everyone in Hollywood is typecast to a degree.
I am happy being able to play roles with people my age because once you do something really mature there is no turning back.
Then she had been a fiancee, a young wife, and a mother, and she had discovered that these words were far too small ever to contain the experience.
I was very surprised that for a while I could only get cast as straight. It was that way for a few years.
In a way, I feel that film roles haven't given me the opportunity to show I have a sense of humor.
I started out in the 1970s doing the Wife, the Bimbo, and the Ditz, and if I somehow get a serious role, they all wanna know the same thing: When are you going back to comedy?
The advantage my looks gave me was that I wasn't limited to just playing Indian roles when I was abroad, and I've been abroad for almost twenty-five years.
Viola Davis is a perfect example of somebody who's so much better than the parts she has the opportunity to play.
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.
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.
An actor should be ready to play any role within reason. For example, I think the most ridiculous thing for me to do would be to try and play Shakespeare.
