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.
Looking the way I look, whenever anybody's looking for a light brown funny guy, I get the call... I'm 100 percent Greek, but I look like I could be Indian or Middle Eastern or Hispanic. If it's ethnic, they'll try and put me in it.
After Princess Diaries, I was labeled a good girl, and for the first eight years of my career I had to fight to get any other kind of role. But I like fighting for a job, actually. Once you get it, you feel like you've emerged victorious from the scrap and you're like, "OK, this one's mine. Did it. Done."
People decided that I was the frat guy, even though I've never been inside a fraternity, or the guy who beat them up at school, even though that wasn't me at all.
I've had a fantastic career playing great parts. In many ways, the colour of my skin has been an asset because I've been asked to play certain roles as a result. I don't apologise for playing them anymore than Robert de Niro is sorry for playing American-Italians.
I realized that once I graduated from college, there might be a period of time where people might typecast me or be more limiting, and I might not be able to play a crazy character. For me, it was important to do that at least in school.
If you are known to do something well, people want to see you do that. But what you choose to do is up to you. After 'Delhi Belly,' I got some 40 scripts - some on the same lines as 'Delhi Belly.' So, I guess people only get stereotyped if they want to.
At first I was always cast as the girlfriend. It was a long time before I got to play characters who were people.
I feed off variety. I don't want to repeat myself if I can help it, but once they've seen you doing one thing, directors often just want you to do it again.
The kind of roles which you get, people identify with your roles, and it then leads to the kind of brands you get.
Hmm, limelight... No, I'm not Sienna Miller or Angelina Jolie. I'm very lucky and happy, but I still find it very difficult to get good scripts and good roles. It's really a jungle out there.
I think right after 'Up in the Air' everyone wanted me to play the girl from 'Up in the Air,' and it took a little while for people to think of me as an actress from a film that they liked instead of just that character.
I was thrust, excitingly, via 'Elizabeth' and 'Shakespeare in Love,' into a position one can only dream of, but it was startling, too. I was offered a multitude of roles riding horses in flouncy shirts, and I just thought, 'Hang on, I've just done that. What next?'
Typecasting is really rampant in Hollywood, and because I played a costumed character and did it successfully, it was a real stigma.
Until 45 I can play a woman in love. After 55 I can play grandmothers. But between those ten years, it is difficult for an actress.
The reason I am unemployed for six months out of every year is because I have to turn down most of the films I'm offered. If I didn't, I'd only ever play a dark, satanic count on a horse.
I can understand why people get annoyed at being remembered for one thing, but a lot of actors aren't remembered for anything. I don't mind that.
I've not been discriminated against, but I can see it happen. And not just race but gender and sexuality, too. It's stereotyping, lazy casting, which is an issue: that people can't see outside the box.
I enjoy darker sardonic wit more than knock-knock jokes. I spent the first healthy chunk of my career playing all-American, pleasant, average, nice people, so it's fun to have some complications there.
I don't want to have to be like a Scarlett Johansson - who I have nothing against - but I don't want to have to go on talk shows and pull out every SAT word I've ever learned to prove, like, 'Take me seriously, I am intelligent, I can speak.'
Generally, I feel I'm cast aside because of the kind of movies that I make.
Well, a younger woman is a type, but not necessarily a type for me. And what is a younger woman? I mean, I'm pretty old. Almost everyone is younger.
When you wear a mask and create a character, nothing will pigeonhole you faster.
I feel like I've done Pete Hornberger, and that is a painting I have signed, and I don't need to play that character anymore. So I'll get offers for panicky, pathetic guys, and while it's a great compliment to get them, I feel like I don't need to play that again.
A lot of Disney Channel actors and actresses, when they stop working for Disney Channel, they have a real aversion for not wanting to be remembered by Disney Channel.
