A Quote by Taika Waititi
I did roles that I hated, and there were roles that were detrimental to my acting ability. There were roles that I was always doing that were always the comic relief... it was destroying my soul.
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I was reading through endless junk scripts that were being sent my way. Typically the roles were to play his wife or his girlfriend - leading roles for women were few and far between.
When I started coming to the U.S., they were offering me only the typical stereotypical roles: the druggard, the criminal, the gang member, or in the best-case scenario, the gardener or the cook. I was fed up with all these roles that were always the same. And I promised I would try to change the image of Latinos in Hollywood.
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.
Doing comic roles is a great relief considering the power-packed roles that are usually offered to me.
I think I found roles which weren't the roles I thought I'd be doing but they were the kind that brought me where I never imagined myself to be.
I'm happy doing what I'm doing. I do think, though, there were great comic actors like Thora Hird and Max Wall who only got taken seriously when they did straight roles at the end of their careers.
When I started out in the '90s, there were not many people of color writing, directing and producing - hence, the roles for people of color were few and far between. There's still few roles in England [where she's from].
I've had to fight for roles and I've lost a hundred roles, but 'Smoking' and 'Smith' were phone calls. That's the dream.
I think all the roles were something that sort of hit me, and I guess I was very lucky to get those roles.
Not all the roles that I've gotten were stereotypical, but in Korea, especially for TV, it's a bit limited for women in their twenties and thirties. There aren't enough female roles.
I always loved when James Stewart did roles that were not so dialogue-based, like 'Vertigo.'
There were certain young actors I had trained with at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art who had always got the big parts and I was always the spear-carrier. Suddenly the roles were reversed and I couldn't understand why, and nor could they.
There were not a lot of roles for a black man like myself that were different. Then 'Top Boy' came. I read the script and I loved that the characters were human.
I wanted to play roles which offered new ways of viewing black women and black people in general- and I have done that. And I have always, whether I needed to pay the rent or not, I've always turned down roles which I thought were stereotypical. And so when I look at my body of work in that respect, I am really happy. Because I feel my work does say something positive and that was what I always set out to do.
I think when average-size people start taking roles that were meant for dwarfs, that's a little frustrating because there aren't that many roles out there for height-challenged actors.
That transition from child to adult actor is so incredibly elusive. The roles that were coming to me as a young adult were not that great, but I was taking them anyway to pay the rent. And the more bad roles in bad movies I took, the less anybody wanted me for a good role in a good movie.
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