When my career first began, I didn't have children - so there's a whole lot of difference in the way I choose roles now. Not just films for my children, but how long I'm going to be away, and is Dad going to be home while I'm gone. That sort-of factor plays a part.
The roles that men and women play are no longer the standard traditional roles of way back when but are those of two very individual people living their lives. I think it's been a hard transition in society - just take a look at the divorce rate - to figure out what that means now. How do you resolve that?
I don't pick my roles by genre; that's kind of silly.
There are roles I want that my agency might not want me to do because of the subject matter or whatever. Or there are roles that people won't bring to me because they don't think I'll do it. And that is a big strain because an actor wants to act.
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.
The problem of sexism is getting better, but I don't know if it's getting better fast enough. We see more roles for women that don't entirely revolve around the way in which they function in a man's life, but typically those women are almost always white, and even then, there are only a few of them.
You could say I'm a character actress. Or maybe a character actress who does peculiar, interesting lead roles. Does that make sense?
You gotta understand, there weren't a whole lot of roles for Hispanics in the Eighties, so comedy was really the way I could really feed myself and eventually feed my family. I was an actor who learned to be a comic, and it's cool to come back and get back into acting - move forward in the direction I started out to do in the beginning.
I would switch roles with Madonna for a day. Or if Audrey Hepburn was still alive, Audrey Hepburn. I love Audrey Hepburn. She's one of my idols, also.
I've played some gangster roles, but that's obviously not me. When you're an Italian-American New York actor, it's just an easy way to get cast.
In Hollywood, you're always playing roles... It's like going through the motions. But in real life, it's like, you gotta take care of business. It's not just the movies.
I had to work out where I was going, what type of films I wanted to make. For that reason, I decided to choose independent productions, less important roles, and I tried theater, too.
I broke into acting doing Latino roles. I played a Latino casanova in 'The Winner' and a Latino character on 'Hannah Montana.'
I'm so sick of hearing how there's no strong roles for women. I don't care about strong roles. I just want to see women who are characters! A nun, a serial killer, a housewife, as long as there's some depth there.
But it is not conscious strategy to go for unconventional roles.
In the summer of 1966, I went to Mississippi to be in the heart of the civil-rights movement, helping people who had been thrown off the farms or taken off the welfare roles for registering to vote. While working there, I met the civil-rights lawyer I later married - we became an interracial couple.
Potentially, you do inhabit different worlds. And while there are no specific roles I'm burning to play, as far as acting in the future goes, I'd really like to have done searing work.
I chose not to go home and struggle with the New York scene. My size sort of locked me out. I was too short for the stage. I would have been doing character roles, so I went to Los Angeles. There is a lot more happening out there. I also felt it was important to break away from my family.
I'm very proud of my roles. I enjoy the ability to touch millions of people and, in some way, connect with them in ways that I cannot connect with them in my normal, everyday life.
I think male roles are generally much better written. So for actresses, we're always dealing with trying to inject a role with more truth than the writer possibly had in mind.
The scenes in the show were filmed with a crew of really excellent stunt jumpers, but we had the feel of the parachutes, so we could be more realistic in the roles.
I was getting offers. I had just turned them down. Then I realized I should be grateful that at age 54, people were still offering me film roles.
You know, it shouldn't just be about women as heroic figures overcoming things, it just needs to be about women in general getting the opportunity to play a multitude of roles, telling a multitude of stories - just to express human experience from a woman's perspective. I hope, someday, we can get to that point. I'm all about representation.
I was never a pretty girl, so I wasn't the one to get the boy. I used to cast myself as a good sport. Sometimes I wonder if I do that too much with roles I play, because if I'm absolutely truthful, I quite like being the best friend, or the supporting role, and actually I ought to gear-change and make myself the leading role.
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.
I've always wanted to explore different types of roles and prove to others that Divyanka is not all about being a timid dulhan.
I wasn't a glamour-puss, and there were more interesting roles for an actress like me in the theater and in live television.
I'm not in the business of becoming famous. And that's the advice I give to younger aspiring actors. Work onstage and do the little roles. In the end it's not important to be seen. It's important to do. There's a lot of disappointment in this business, but my family keeps me grounded.
I really feel like the stars have aligned many ways, many times for me. I have been blessed to play some awesome roles and nuanced and meaningful characters.
You think once you've shown what you can do, and your movies have been successful, that snap, you work. So to discover the difference between guys' roles and girls' roles made me plain mad. It's unjust.
I really only take roles that I love and that I have some kind of innate compulsion or need to tell that story. Although it's almost like I have no control over it. It's like they choose me.
It's also a question of finding good material and interesting roles. I'm not the only actress out there, and good parts just don't fall into your lap that easily. But I like most of the films I've made recently and so I'm pretty positive about the future.
No one's calling me for lawyer roles. I still have a lot to do to prove myself.
I've been fortunate that a lot of roles I've done have been professionals and not your TV stereotype of Latinos.
It was great to play an ex-marine cockney thug. All my roles are as different as the colours of the rainbow.
I've seen such great material, and now I'm more picky with the type of jobs that I take because it's gotta be there. There's an old theater saying: 'If it's not on the page, it's not on the stage'... You gotta have some type of standards as far as the jobs that you take and the roles that you take on.
