I get offered varied parts, often super sexy roles. But I still think it's an issue to find the good scripts. It's a myth that you win an Oscar and you get more opportunities, and this doesn't just go for me.
I'm in a fortunate position that sometimes you just get offered roles - they're not necessarily the roles you take, but to get offered a film is amazing. I think the work you've done before that is why you get it.
The nature of the business is that, once you start proving yourself and the more roles you get, the more exciting the roles that you're able to go out and do auditions for, or that you're being offered, get. You have more choices.
Hmm, limelight... No, I'm not Sienna Miller or Angelina Jolie. I'm very lucky and happy, but I still find it very difficult to get good scripts and good roles. It's really a jungle out there.
I was drawn to gay parts because of their scripts, what the roles offered.
You don't just win an Oscar because you're a great actor. You campaign for that Oscar: you engage with it; you go on the David Letterman show, and you do the interviews, and that's how you get out there.
I give preference to scripts and of course, the importance of my role in the storyline. Still I am not after hero roles. I take such roles only when I find the scripts exciting.
There are so many good roles for women out there, I don't understand it when people say the role choices are fewer as you get older. I find the opposite to be true - there are less good roles out there for the hot 20-year-olds because the normal girl parts just aren't interesting.
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.
I'm having to do a lot to keep my clothes on and not be cast in girlfriend roles. Some women will say, "I don't want to be a man - I want the opportunities I can get as a woman." Women have a certain sexuality, and I think their bodies are beautiful and I'm not embarrassed to explore that in a film. But there are things you get offered that are vulgar and violent - just like there's a side of me that's vulgar and violent.
I don't get offered leading parts. I suppose I've become a kind of character actor or sideman. I think it had to do with probably in the '90s, I refused so many leading roles that they gave up on me, or I just became unpopular, or I became old. All those reasons.
A lot of young Latino actors have said to me, 'Why can't we get an Oscar? Why can't we be nominated?' And the terrible truth is that if you don't get the right parts, you're not going to be. Are you going to get an Oscar nomination for one of those Judd Apatow movies? Not likely, no matter what nationality you are.
If you're a sexy actress, it's hard to get serious roles. You get offered the same thing they've seen you in. People are like sheep, and they're like, 'Oh, that's what she does well.'
I'm in a place in my life where I get offered parts that I didn't get offered before - fathers and uncles and grandfathers and so on. And it took me a long time to get to that place, but I'm glad because it opens up new territory.
In New York I was always offered the hot, sexy roles. But in L.A. I was offered the plain, dowdy roles. It says a lot about the difference between the coasts
In New York I was always offered the hot, sexy roles. But in L.A. I was offered the plain, dowdy roles. It says a lot about the difference between the coasts.
I just don't want to miss anything in the lives of my children while they are still young. It's why I don't audition for leading roles at all and why I say no to some of the supporting roles that I do get offered.