A Quote by Essie Davis

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.
I don't want to play father roles. And I use father roles figuratively for roles that are just hanging around... don't want to be a piece of furniture in films.
In other ways, you constantly have to change people's opinion of you as one thing, especially if you want to play different roles. You have to shatter that image sometimes. I've had to do it before with stage roles, to get roles. I'm drawn to kind of darker, misfit things. I would like to, especially in film, play against type and do some heavier stuff. I'm intrigued by projects that deal with problematic people and things.
I don't want to do 'Hamlet.' I don't want to do Robert Redford roles or Mel Gibson roles or Kevin Costner roles, because I'm not going to be good at them.
There are certain aspects of me that can be bad-ass sometimes, but being able to push it to the extreme is something I'd love to play. You don't get those roles, as a female, and especially as an indigenous female. There aren't those roles out there, so I want that. I want women to see a strong, sexy female without showing her body too much.
I change myself a lot. Some roles you don't want to be big, bulky, muscle-y guy and some roles you want to be a lean, marathon-runner physical type. And some roles you just don't want to be in shape.
I'm not getting into rooms for cis roles. I started my career auditioning for those roles, and then I went to play trans roles. And now, I feel boxed in.
I'd love to be remembered as a character actor who brought illumination to roles in wonderful plays and who delivered performances that made people think and rethink those roles.
I want to keep doing interesting work with interesting people in whatever form that may take, but I want to play the big parts of classical theatre; I want to go on stage and play great Shakespearean roles and, at the same time, do amazing, challenging indie films and comedy, and I want to do it all. I am greedy.
Unfortunately, there's a lack of roles for women of color, so you actually have to be the engineer creating some of those roles.
I want to play a character that is cold. I think there are sides of me that are like that. I'm a fan of the actor Edward Norton, and if you see his early works, he plays a lot of those roles.
I don't want to build any image for myself. I don't want people to say, 'He does only a certain type of role.' I don't want only to be the hero of the story. An actor's weakness is the different roles that he can't do. But I am keen to grab only those roles as I am here to challenge myself.
People always ask me, 'Why so many historical dramas?' Because those are the best roles I get to play, and I get to play heroes in those roles.
You don't have the opportunity to win an Emmy unless you're given the opportunity to play certain kinds of roles.
I just really want to continue to play those roles where I really have something to do, and mainly, above all, work with people that I can learn from - directors I think are so great.
If you just look at the number of roles for women versus the number of roles for men in any given film, there are always far more roles for men. That's always been true. When I went to college, I went to Julliard. At that time - and I don't know if this is still true - they always selected fewer women than men for the program, because there were so few roles for women in plays. That was sort of acknowledgment for me of the fact that writers write more roles for men than they do for women.
I'm not one of those actors who's very good at having a list of roles that I want to play someday - which is bad, because I really need to do it. I have people in theaters ask me what I want to do and I don't have an answer!
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