There aren't many roles that are interesting if you're a 40-year-old woman, unless you're Julia Roberts or Cate Blanchett.
I used to do a lot of repertory theater. You're playing different roles all the time, and I love that.
I love acting, but I am a mom, and the roles just weren't coming because of a mixture of things: because I'm not ambitious, and because I'm older, and I had a baby. I really felt like I had said a graceful and completely happy goodbye to acting in a significant way. And I had sort of made my peace with that.
That's the joy of getting to be an actor - getting to play all kinds of different roles and showing so many different sides of yourself.
I think obviously we need to work harder at extending the women's movement. How do women who have prepared for careers and have a child get back to the workplace and still fulfill maternal roles?
Sometimes in film and television, I don't have the opportunity to play roles that really stretch and challenge me.
I am completely grateful and pleased for the attention and the recognition I've received for playing the roles that I've played.
I just wanted to get out there and do different roles and try new things.
I enjoy having the ability to play a variety of ethnicities. Being ethnically ambiguous allows me to explore many roles, and I enjoy being free to be whoever I want to be.
In my first few years as an actor, I took one terrible TV job after another. But even as I laughed off my awful roles and made fun of myself to friends, my work made me cringe - I dreaded anyone's seeing it. I was crushed that I wasn't doing anything I was proud of.
I couldn't get any of the ingenue roles when younger because at 5 feet 9 inches with a deep voice I was always too... genue. My career has completely happened since I was 29.
The Egyptian military plays positive and negative roles in Egypt, but the most significant single thing it did under Mubarak was to guarantee an Islamist victory once he left the scene.
We don't put gender roles on our marriage and our relationship. If I'm working a lot and Cory's home, he will put Cree to bed, and if dishes need to be washed, he will wash them. So it's not like, 'Oh, I'm going to wait until my wife gets home, and she's going to be doing all that.'
One of the pleasures of being an actor is quite simply taking a walk in someone else's shoes. And when I look at the roles I've played, I'm kind of amazed at all the wonderful adventures I've had and the different things I've learned.
A lot of times when people cast me, they want this big, deep black voice... And I tend to recycle them with different roles from time to time.
I'm never offered any sort of roles. I need to audition in a typically lengthy process to receive roles.
I could be a star and maybe make lots of money, or I could change roles all the time and have a more interesting - and longer - career.
I can do more than anyone suspects. I pride myself on my versatility. It took 32 years of difficult parts, second leads, villains and juveniles. The Oscar changed the quality of the roles I was being offered.
Life is a blur when one is essaying different roles; it is so fulfilling.
Acting is an art form and you want to take roles that are challenged and it's more of a challenge I think to play dark characters. Not that I want to always play those, but it is a challenge and challenges are rewarding and fun.
Get yourself into every audition that you can. Even in those for smaller roles, you'll never know when someone may recommend you for a bigger one.
I want to have the great roles that move people profoundly. I want to have the choice and be given the opportunity to play those roles, and unfortunately, fame plays a huge part in that.
Ultimately, the goal is to use acquisitions to compress time on product development and get people on the team, especially in senior roles, who can help build out areas of the company they have experience in.
It sounds so negative of me to say, but I don't feel like there were many coming-of-age films when I was growing up. I think that when I was a teenager, I felt really misrepresented in the teenage roles that I was watching onscreen. Especially in women.
You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there.
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.
I've done a lot of serious roles, but they're, like, independent, so it's harder for them to come out. The big ones have been comedies, but I would love to get a big drama to let people see the other side of me, that I am a serious actress.
I admire Brad Pitt. He hasn't just done leading-man hunky roles; he's done a lot of edgier things.
The most important thing to keep in mind is the incredible diversity of talent that's out there - there are so many great actors from all over Asia, from Singapore and Hong Kong to the Philippines and Mainland China, not to mention many great Asian-American actors who are eager for fun and challenging roles.
I like to think I'm multi-faceted. Actually, my favorite roles are roles like in 'Far from Heaven.' Y'know. Soft people. Loving people.
I was trained classically, and that's something that I want to do, but I do want to say that right now it's a good market for female comedians, and I want to explore that right now. I really do want to do dramas and meatier roles, especially film.
I think I'd like to play more happy roles because I haven't done too many of those. I think I'd like to do an action film; something with a harness would be fun.
If people liked seeing me in loverboy roles, I don't intend to break that.
I've been very lucky not to have turned down too many roles that I've later regretted.
I do intelligent roles. I don't want to be labeled as doing silly movies. I'm more mature than kids my age because I'm constantly surrounded by adults.
I had no interest at all in opera or singing. I saw my fellow students struggling with their scores, laboring to memorize operatic roles, and I thought, 'That's not for me!'
