A Quote by Maggie Gyllenhaal

Now, there are roles which are capturing a vibrant moment in an older woman's life. There was a time when those interesting roles stopped at 28. A few years ago we would have been finished by our age.
When I started in the business, years ago, people would always say, "You better get as much work as you can now because, once you get over 40, it's over." I don't see that with TV. Maybe it's because I am getting older, but the kinds of roles I'm drawn to are more mature roles.
Everything changes with age. The parts change with age, your feelings about them change, roles that I would've wanted to play 10 years ago, I don't want to play now.
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.
Women in their 40s have gone through quite a few different things, and so the roles are going to reflect that. People say, 'Oh, it's done by 40,' and now everyone knows it's not. I actually feel like the roles are a lot more interesting.
I'm an actor and I am looking for roles where I can continue to evolve, and things that are challenging. I gravitate to the roles, not necessarily television or film. It's just the fact that, for me, the most interesting roles have been in television.
I don't need the money after 11 years on 'Frasier,' and there aren't that many great roles onstage left for somebody my age. I'm more interested in playing those roles than I am in playing bit parts in movies.
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.
It is true that in this culture, they throw you out when you get older. I see it all the time, especially in my business. At my age, you're playing somebody's mother - and there aren't even a lot of those roles!
I figured as I got older, the good roles for women would be in the theatre. So 15 years ago I started building a Broadway career to try and develop the chops to be accepted as a great theatrical actress.
Seventeen's not so young. A hundred years ago people got married when they were practically our age." "Yeah, that was before electricity and the Internet. A hundred years ago eighteen-year-old guys were out there fighting wars with bayonets and holding a man's life in their hands! They lived a lot of life by the time they were our age. What do kids our age know about love and life?
Whatever is said about roles drying up, I intend to keep working. Certainly now the roles couldn't be more interesting - playing mothers, divorcees. I think it's going to be exciting to play a mother of teenagers. The longer your life, the deeper it gets.
People with a college education are now less likely to divorce than they were a few decades ago, and they're more likely to describe their marriages as happy. That finding really surprised me. It appears that those with a higher education have been more able to dismantle strict traditional roles and, in doing so, gain more freedom. I call it a seesaw marriage, one in which both the man and the woman take turns being the breadwinner, making it possible for each of them to experience career advancements or breaks at different times.
I have played quite a few roles almost double my age. I don't regret those decisions and feel proud to have been part of 'Gandhi My Father' and 'Waqt.'
There's plenty of girlfriend roles out there. They've come my way, and many people have turned them down, and I think, "Oh maybe I could do something with this." It's interesting when you get those roles, which seem like nothing on the page, and you kind of subvert them. It's hard to say no.
We must know our own roles. We should also know the roles that others play, and the rules such roles follow. In this manner, social harmony is maintained. It is when we overstep our roles, or act without knowing them, that social anarchy ensues.
The majority of the roles I've played are women who have been either impoverished or subjugated in some way. So while I've been fortunate enough to have success because these roles exist, they are stereotypical roles.
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