There are roles out there and women out there that are fascinating to me, and there are things in our culture that I see that I want to express. It's my passion to express that.
My father was a gruff Irishman who was unable to express feelings and always insisted we be tough. Being a parent, for me, means creating what I didn't have. I want my children to feel love and be able to express it.
... social roles vary in the extent to which it is culturally permissible to express ambivalence or negative feelings toward them.Ambivalence can be admitted most readily toward those roles that are optional, least where they are considered primary. Thus men repress negative feelings toward work and feel freer to express negative feelings toward leisure, sex and marriage, while women are free to express negative feelings toward work but tend to repress them toward family roles.
I want our young Latinos and Latinas to write their hearts out and express their hearts out and let us all listen to each other.
I was so tired of the parts I had to play. There seems little for me in Hollywood, because, rather than real Chinese, producers prefer Hungarians, Mexicans, American Indians for Chinese roles.
What I really want to do is create great roles for women. And I'm not talking Nicholas Sparks romance. I think women's roles have gotten ghettoized in these sort of places... I'm thinking women in action, comic books, or like the Tony Soprano of women. We need some complex roles.
Throughout my career I've played a lot of parts that might've been played by a man. They're human roles rather than specifically men or women. I've never been as hooked into that as a lot of women are, you know, like, 'There aren't enough roles for women.' There aren't necessarily a lot of good roles for anybody.
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.
It's really hard to find parts that challenge me as an actor these days. At this point in my career, I feel like I can just sleepwalk through most of my roles and still do a better job than 90 percent of the actors out there.
I feel like there is this resurgence of amazing roles for women. It's because TV is so good - there are amazing parts for women on TV, and it's upped the game in movies.
I want to show how strong and smart women are. We go through so much. We need to see that on screen. Those female parts are not many, but they are out there, and I have to find some. I want that chance.
I never want to be told, "Hey, this is what you do best, and this is the only thing you're going to do." And there are other people that are put into that box. Or unable to navigate through all the different genres. Some people insist on being a tough guy even though it's not happening. People only want to see them in leading romantic roles. Yet they continue to try and force something that doesn't feel organic to people.
Usually being a young actor, you've got to go through certain levels of hierarchy, going through bit parts and extra roles and then kind of progressing up the food chain and having the size of your roles grow in that sense.
How do you explain what it feels like to get on the stage and make poetry that you know sinks into the hearts and souls of people who are unable to express it
I feel I like portraying women-centric roles, since I can express pent-up frustrations and suppressed feelings lying deep inside a female soul.
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.