It's much easier to play supporting roles because that's what I do in my life: I support my son.
I think women today are really struggling with these dual roles: How do you have a full-time career and be ambitious and still take care of your family?
Having played many roles of scientific intellect I do have an empathy for that world. It's been hard on me because flying the Enterprise for seven years in Star Trek and sitting in Cerebro in X-men has led people to believe that I know what I'm talking about. But I'm still trying to work out how to operate the air conditioning unit on my car.
I am not an actress who only wants to do lead roles.
In microbiology the roles of mutation and selection in evolution are coming to be better understood through the use of bacterial cultures of mutant strains.
Therapy? I don't need that. The roles that I choose are my therapy.
I know at some point I would like to take on more dramatic roles.
I never pursued acting with, like, auditions. If anything, I was given roles by people who knew me and liked what I did.
I don't think I ever expected anything like an Oscar ever, to tell you the truth. That is not my motivation when I do these roles. I really am motivated by being able to work with great people and create a body of work that I can look back and be proud of.
I had only that one picture, Hitler, the Beast of Berlin, in which I had a part big enough to impress anyone. I tried for better roles over and over again.
I see film roles as lovely presents that come along now and again. I feel really lucky and say thank you very much. And if they fly me to L.A., I think, 'God, I must really be doing well.' I've worked with De Niro and Brando and Pacino, and that's made me feel very lucky. But the films have never meant a lot to me.
We are all multidimensional and kind of have dual personalities. Everyone puts on different roles depending on what circumstances they're in without even noticing that they do that.
Sometimes, the smaller roles in movies can be the most interesting. If you only take the stance that you'll only play central characters in movies, you'll find yourself not being able to indulge in that morally grey terrain that makes support characters so rich and interesting.
Today, I guess I give a lot more thought to the roles before I sign them.
I think, certainly in the more civilized societies, women's roles are growing in power all of the time.
I choose my roles carefully.
I longed to break out of the system and do different roles.
I relate to that idea of not necessarily seeking out 'interesting female roles,' but 'this character, this role, who happens to be a woman, is interesting to me, and I relate to it in some way, so I'm just gonna go with my gut and see where it leads me.'
I loved doing Shakespeare. My two favorite roles, in fact, have been Viola in Twelfth Night and Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
I style my roles mostly with some help from my team of stylists.
I always loved acting, but when you get older and you're going through adolescence, the roles are limited.
People are incapable of stereotyping you; you stereotype yourself because you're the one who accepts roles that put you in this rut or in this stereotype.
I judge movies on how much fun I had while I was doing them. I had a great time on 'The Right Stuff.' Doing that was fantastic. And there was the year I did 'The Rookie' and 'Far From Heaven,' which was amazing because those two different roles were just so far apart.
I've been offered starring roles in horrible movies, but I just didn't want to do it. I don't see why you would.
But at a certain point, and I don't really know... people have asked me this. I don't know exactly what it was that pushed me towards directing, but I think it was a naive notion that if I directed I would be able to play all the roles. A kind of greed.
What I'm normally associated with are darker, more brooding roles.
I love all kinds of movies. I love a really good comedy and not the cheesy ones. My parents hate this, but I love horror films. Those are my favorite, and of course, dramatic roles. I'm really drawn to those as well. All different genres.
As children, we think our mother has always been a mother, but it is just one of the roles you may have the opportunity to play. They don't define you as a human being.
We've never thought too deeply about the roles things like forgetting or partisanship or inefficiency or ambiguity or hypocrisy play in our political or social life. It's been impossible to get rid of them, so we took them for granted, and we kind of thought, naively, that they're always the enemy.
I tend to turn down roles that are too much like me, what I think is most like me anyhow, because I'm me all the time and I'm sick of it.
Dismissing socialization and gender roles as piddling compared to this amorphous idea of 'maternal imperative' is part of the reason progress is stalled for family-friendly policies.
I'm not exactly in a position where I get to be super-picky about the roles I get. But I would also never want to be a part of something that I think is poor in taste or doesn't align with what I believe in.
I don't remember ever deciding to become a performer. I just always was. I began performing by mimicking the performers on the new television that first took the attention away from me as the baby of the household. I continued performing to put a smile on my grandmother's face and always considered her when accepting or declining roles.
First of all, I choose the great roles, and if none of these come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don't come, I choose the ones that pay the rent.
I wanted to be on the stage, doing very important emotional roles.
I generally like grey roles. My interpretation of drama is different from the popular perception. Acting, for me, is not about overplaying, it is about concealing. I like flawed characters that people relate to. I would never do a romcom.
