Roles Quotations | Page 6

It's still not easy to find roles that offer more complex images of women.

People, unprotected by their roles, become isolated in beauty and intellect and illness and confusion.

There's so much hate that we direct externally that we forget we have our own psychos. But that's the role of the satirist - you have to examine your own country and say, look!

You go up for hundreds, thousands of roles, and you get told no, no, no, so many times.

The role seemed to demand that I keep myself worked up to fever pitch, so I took on the actual attributes of the horrible vampire, Dracula.

I want to do roles that will challenge me. I'm definitely interested in period pieces. But I definitely don't want to limit myself. I'm very open to different roles.

I'm not expecting much work in Hollywood, to be honest. People stick to film because they tend to get offered the same roles over and over again, and it's safe. But I'm not interested in doing that.

The cool thing is that, unlike film, the theatre roles for women get better and better as you get older.

In Israel, the role of the writer is dictated by the language in which you write. Writers see themselves as cultural prophets.

Midwives and doctors play a crucial role preventing unnecessary maternal deaths. They educate women about nutrition, health and family planning. And they step in when complications arise.

The director, of course, was Bob Fosse. But again, I worked with my father to prepare for the role.

You know, I'm not saying, 'Oh, because I play a good guy on TV, I need to suddenly be villainous in a movie.' I look at it more like: does this role has a kind of urgency for me in terms of, 'Can I not say no to it for whatever reason?'

I love the role that men play in our lives.

I have more artistic control in a smaller show. But it doesn't really matter. Sometimes you can have the smallest role in the smallest production and still make a big impact.

When you're a woman in your 40s, it's not the best time to do films, because there really aren't that many roles. Then you reach 50 and there are more roles again. Mother parts.

I have to be careful not to do so many comedy airhead roles from now on. I've turned down a couple already.

My criteria for doing theater has always been slightly different than my criteria with movies, in that there are a lot of reasons to do films, having to do with location, money, and first and foremost having to do with script and role and director.

To play a role where you get to reveal intellectual change is wonderful.

What the British seem to like are television historians and naturalists, not public intellectuals. You can't help feeling that's because one supplies narrative and the other supplies facts, and the British are traditionally empiricists so they/we have a resistance to theory and to theoreticians playing too prominent a role in public life.

The litmus test for whether I want to take on a role or not is usually fear. If Im afraid of it, then I want to do it.

We still have to create things for African American women. Just like Tyler Perry is doing it, we can't wait for things to happen; you have to go and make and create roles and go to people.

There weren't a lot of action roles growing up - there were a few, maybe, like Wonder Woman, but then it wasn't real action.

I lose film roles because I'm a person who doesn't keep quiet about certain things. But if my heart tells me something is wrong, I'm going to go and do something about it.

Actors in general have become very spoiled in the roles they choose these days. When I first started in this profession - about a hundred years ago in the last century - it was all about taking risks, it was about doing the job and honing the craft.

In the end, there's something of the puritan work ethic about me that roles really must sustain me on an intellectual level.

I have always refused to do something that has offended me. I have been offered potential roles that are totally vulgar.

You've got to respond to that and of course thinking through the role of a left party in the modern world, in the modern economy and society and having a policy response to that.

One result of An American Family was that I became a gay role model.

The traditional role of the Senate has been to be the adult in the room.

Pop culture shapes our ideas of what is normal and what our dreams can be and what our roles are. Politics, of course, decides how the power and the money in the country is distributed. Both are equally important, and each affects the other.

Whether it be in a small movie or a big movie, I would always be attracted to this role.

I don't think you should do things in your personal life differently because you're a role model.

The Supreme Court and courts in general have been usurping the role of the legislative branch of government.

For most of my career, I've played roles that were written for other actresses.

There are some older women out there who are just knockouts, real beauties, and they're not getting the roles they should.

In subsequent years the groups you named had important roles in educating people about the real issues in Washington and Raleigh, and within the Democratic Party.

I know Mama Rose is a great role and I love having a chance to do it.

It's my job in Hollywood to find roles where I get to be a character not a bathing suit.

They all matter to me, whether I'm working on a Sam Jackson film for a week or I'm the star of my own TV series - I take it all very seriously, and I have a healthy respect for the work in general, despite the role.

And I had known Peter O'Toole before in London. And I'd liked him very much. And the thought of being in a picture with him was very challenging to me. And he was playing the starring role.

I remember when I first came to Los Angeles being staggered by the range of roles open to me. These were leading parts in shiny new projects, and what always excited me was knowing there was a possibility that I could actually get these parts. I always had the impression that I had a chance.

Being a role model is about being true to myself.

Masculine and feminine roles are not biologically fixed but socially constructed.

Beauty was never really my trip. Maybe those roles are attracted to me?

I think I've always just been kinda geeky and got to play some mildly appealing roles.

The role of women has always been undervalued in the spy world, always undermined in terms of recognition. Unfairly so. It's a world that needs women.

As the captain, I was going to be having the dominant role in most of the episodes, and that was appealing. I wasn't interested in coming to Hollywood to sit around.

Our role in Israel is a pioneering one, and we need people with certain strength of fiber.

The role of the intelligence - that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions is merely to submit.

And government's only role is to secure our rights for us.

The moment you say, 'I want to do a role,' the story suffers. I don't set priorities in terms of roles or scripts.

I'm not paid to be a role model, parents should be role models.

I feel a responsibility to continue creating complex roles for black women, especially young black women.

The kinds of roles dogs fill can be hard to come by in human relationships. We touch the dog or the pet at whim. There is a lack of self-consciousness and a fluidity to it that is absent from most human relationships. If someone acted that way to you, you'd feel claustrophobic pretty quickly. It's a boundary violation.

I want roles without anger and feistiness. I want to show weakness and sadness, some love, some happiness.

I don't want to play everything. So I'll seek out roles that I'll say, 'This is edgy. This is fun. This is wicked. This suits me.'

I don't pick my roles by genre; that's kind of silly.

The role of art in society differs for every artist.

Anthony Hopkins says you just keep acting. Do it all the time and eventually it will happen. He got his break, after all, by taking a role nobody else wanted. A cannibal!

I'm half Jewish, but no one believes me because my looks lean a little WASP-y... It's sometimes hard for me to get the roles I'm drawn to.

I love roles where I have to transform myself.

One of the best ways to change is to act as if you are the person you want to become. When you behave as if you are a different person, you change on a very basic level - even your physiology changes. When actors and actresses perform, their body chemistry is altered by the roles they play.

My husband calls it winging it - the way I just took what the studios gave me, didn't do my homework and avoided roles that would risk my image.

The actors that inspire me are the comedians and the people able to shape-shift into different roles and into different media.

I'm not preaching about things you should do, I'm not political or anything. I'm probably not the best role model.

I've never done any nudity, but I would do basically anything if a role called for it.

It's always exciting to explore adult roles when the vast majority of viewers that have seen me on TV know me from 'Glee,' from something of a different tone.

For the metropolis presents the peculiar conditions which are revealed to us as the opportunities and the stimuli for the development of both these ways of allocating roles to men.

I wish I had a little more ambition. But then what would I do? Turn down more roles with more vehemence? Me no likey worky.

As an actor, you can do what you want with your role. That's why they hire you; to take the role and make it real.

Women are responsible for creating their own roles

I like coming to the United States because the United States played an important role in my life.

I hope that through my example, such as my role on 'The West Wing,' I can help change attitudes on deafness and prove we can really do everything... except hear.

The natural role of twentieth-century man is anxiety.

I love playing a role where I think I'm right and then you learn you're not.

Obviously I'm not a role model for impressionable youth.

In fact, the socialization gives us the tools to fill our evolutionary roles. They are our building blocks.

I still reject lead roles, as I don't accept any role if I don't find it challenging enough. I am very careful while making selections.

When I started acting, my whole focus and intention was to work as a stage actor in a company where you're asked to different roles - do a comedy, do a tragedy, etc. I haven't had any reservations about jumping from one type of genre to another.

Everybody knows when you've got a role in a Spike Lee movie, you're gonna blow up. But I happen to be the only person who's had the lead in the two Spike Lee movies nobody saw.

For acting, if there's a strong female role and there is that action element, for me that just feels really natural.

I kind of see clothes a bit like role-playing, depending what mood I'm in.

In the the late seventies and early eighties, I played background roles in thirty movies... Woody Allen movies, Scorsese films, you name it. Whatever was being shot in New York, I was doing stand-in and background work because I wanted to be close to the camera; I wanted to see what was going on.

I would like more challenging roles. I definitely would like to something that's more challenging.

I sort of have open invitations from a lot of people to do TV. But it's very hard for me to do roles in sitcoms and movies because I'm not a great actor, so if the material isn't good, I'm in torment while I do it.

After I got to Hollywood, I resented that I didn't get a crack at more dramatic roles because I photographed so beautifully.

I was a member of the Armed Services Committee for 18 years. I spent a big chunk of my life studying national security issues and our role in the world.

American social arrangements, economic arrangements, the degree of inequality in American life, the relatively small role played by the government in American public life and so forth, compares to exactly the opposite conditions in most of the European societies.

It was a terrible blow that was dealt when I was fired from 'Saturday Night Live', but I have to say that a few doors opened right away. Movie roles started to roll in, and pretty soon, I was over it.

I started writing because I got so frustrated that there weren't enough plays that had roles for young black women in them.

I have a role now that I think becomes me. I am a grandmother.

I'm a little more comfortable in that role. I love being in the studio.

One of the first speaking roles I had was in a film called 'Svengali', with Peter O'Toole and Elizabeth Ashley. I was a waiter, and I had about three lines. And I was ready! I had been around people like that, and I knew they were just actors. All the work I had done, it was all there, and I felt like I knew all the mechanics.

I've become so earthy. And I never was earthy. I'm doing all kinds of different roles which are not at all like the intellectual and the legal mind of Ben Stone.

I feel like I'm playing more of a role walking down the red carpet than when I'm playing an ordinary woman covered in sweat.

The roles... the deep roles that I've gotten to play have turned my course. They've changed my life experience.

I don't know if I could ever really be cast in a heartthrob role apart from 'Twilight,' which I didn't really know was a heartthrob role. I really don't feel I am one.

I want to be in the small percentage of women who don't settle for conventional roles.

I have a lot of variety within me, and the dream role, I think, is actually a compilation of parts that express different aspects of my persona and personal interests.

I know for a fact that if there's a role which I am suited for, I'll be signed on. I'll never go begging.