Not taboo - it's just that straight actors still risk their careers commercially and economically. They have to please the crowd - they're movie stars; their image is their industry. It goes beyond acting.
There was a time when the industry would typecast actors. It still continues to an extent on the celluloid but with the digital medium coming to the fore, the actors are finding equal status with the stars.
There is a difference between movie actors and TV acting, especially with movie stars, which is they know their face is 20 feet high on the screen. They know they don't have to do much.
I think actors, at a certain point in their careers, decide they're either going to keep taking risks or take the exact same risk over and over again so that it's not a risk anymore. That's when I don't want to work with them. I think there are some actors who are just doing the exact same thing, and they will never shift from it.
I wasn't part of the Taboo crowd the same way I was part of the New Romantics. I suppose I was seen more as an elder statesman because I had been around the London club scene for so many years. To the Taboo crowd I was really seen as a pop star, someone famous.
I'm a character actress, plain and simple... Who can worry about a career? Have a life. Movie stars have careers - actors work, and then they don't work, and then they work again.
There are movies where actors aren't characters but movie stars, being cool beyond belief throughout the whole movie. That is what it is. And we reveal ourselves when we act, very often without noticing. But if I can manage to do a character without showing anything of myself, then that's the ultimate goal for me. No leakage.
Movie stars have careers - actors work, and then they don't work, and then they work again.
The taboo for straight actors playing gay is gone... My mother was squirming a bit in the theater because she comes from a different generation.
I'd love to perform with other actors and act with actors, true actors. I would like to be in a movie and have full room for acting.
If I hadn't left South Africa, I felt I was at risk of being pigeonholed. I looked around and saw actors who, 10 to 15 years into their careers, were still playing stereotypical Afrikaans characters, stereotyped Indian characters. That was not something that I wanted for myself.
Still, on 'Friends', we had some guest-stars who were less than spectacular, not the stunt-casting, but just regular guest-stars, and they weren't particularly great actors, but the material was so good that they scored. It's the writing.
At the Golden Globes, they put all the bigger stars in the front; the movie stars in the front, TV actors in the back. But even as a movie star, you can be outseated by a bigger star in any given year. It's kind of hilarious. You have to take it in stride.
Still, the image haunted his dreams throughout the night: a lovely girl gazing at the stars, and the stars who gazed back.
A lot of actors get concerned about their own image, even going so far as to rewrite a movie to best serve that image. All I want to do is be in good movies.
To laugh is to risk appearing a fool. To weep is to risk appearing sentimental. To reach out to another is to risk involvement. To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self. To place your ideas and dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss. To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure. But risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The main problem in any democracy is that crowd-pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage & whup their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy - then go back to the office & sell every one of the poor bastards down the tube for a nickel apiece. Probably the rarest form of life in American politics is the man who can turn on a crowd & still keep his head straight - assuming it was straight in the first place.