Top 1200 Supporting Roles Quotes & Sayings - Page 6

I think when I first started acting there were different people who I thought, 'I want that person's career or that person's career.' And as time has gone on, it's become really clear to me what is important to me; getting the best roles, the roles that I feel are challenging and scary and that I haven't done yet.

Traditionally, women have a lot of different roles in society. It is very difficult to balance all these roles and at the same time to compete with men. A leading, successful woman has to put in much bigger efforts to be more competent and faster, more dynamic and organized, than a successful man.

Some roles require less, and some roles require a great deal of commitment.

I have played some wonderful leading roles on stage and had the whole 'China Beach' years where I really played a leading man on that. That was a fun change for a character actor. But I'm perfectly happy going back to building my gallery of memorable character roles.

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 love directors who aren't going back to the stereotypes, who are helping write and create roles for women that are not in the typical Hollywood box. I'm very, very interested in films that are going outside of stereotypical roles for women.

Roles constantly have to be redefined in any form of entertainment. Look back at the gangster pics of the 1930s and 1940s and the way James Cagney or Humphrey Bogart would play the part. These roles were redefined in the 1970s by Al Pacino and Rober DeNiro. And again in the 1990s by Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins.

I look to longevity. I just consider myself an actress and getting good roles. If being a 'superstar' gets me good roles, then that's a positive thing. But my goal isn't just to be a superstar. It's to act for a long time.

Women have taken on traditionally masculine roles and professions, and there is no real equivalent for men. Men are still extremely reluctant, as we all are reluctant to see them, take on traditionally feminine roles or professions. That is just not something that they do easily.

Every role is easy. As an actor it is my job to make my job easy. If I start hyperventilating about my roles, then how will I do it? So, with all my roles, somewhere I feel comfortable about them, and that is why I play them.

Audiences like me doing action and comedy. I am a jovial person and have been so from childhood. I like to laugh my way through my work, and that attitude reflects in my roles. Even women hate me doing rona-dhona roles. So I don't do emotional films.

The roles that men and women play are no longer the standard traditional roles of way back when but are those of two very individual people living their lives. I think it's been a hard transition in society - just take a look at the divorce rate - to figure out what that means now. How do you resolve that?

All my roles are character roles. On the other hand, there are those people who have an inner...I think we all do the same thing. You can't get by on aura alone. That I know. Everyone has to dig in. Everyone has to do the same set of, "What is this about? What is this character doing?" Everybody from Spencer Tracy to Brad Pitt to Jeffrey Tambor.

The roles do get fewer as you get older. That's the same for all professions, there's fewer roles for people later in life. I don't think it should be like that because as long as you are able to do your job then people should keep working with you. It shouldn't come down to age.

All the roles that I have acted in were all special in a different way. But the role of Ri Jeong-hyeok had more warmth and innocence compared to the other roles that I have acted. I think it was more special in terms of expressing the role.

The thing I always say is that I wasn't going out reaching for roles, I wasn't fighting for roles - people came to me. They always came to me.

I don't think I've ever done a character like this before, so I couldn't really draw from previous roles. I've been known for doing a lot of comedies in England, so I don't think that would have worked. I completely went from scratch, with this one, and used the research and what was in the script, and spoke to Chris. It's all from in my mind ,rather than drawing from previous experiences or roles.

... 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 think you're stereotyped after every film. Post 'Dev D,' I was only offered bold roles. Similarly, after 'Margarita With A Straw,' I was offered roles where I had to play differently-abled people. So, no matter what type of film you work in, people tend to slot you.

Action roles - or any role - should go to the best guy for the job. People obsess about nationality. Hollywood and America might be the hub for pop culture and cinema for the Western world, but that shouldn't suggest that all the roles should go to young American men.

claims about what's 'natural' have long been used to reinforce traditional gender roles and values. ... Even the notion that women should have children at all is based on the idea that a woman's inherent and most important role is that of mother. Shockingly, men's 'innate' roles are a lot more fun than the ones bestowed on women.

Just as the good actor perform well whatever role the poet assigns, so too must the good man perform whatever Fortune assigns. For she, says Bion, just like a poet, sometimes assigns the leading role, sometimes that of the supporting role; sometimes that of a king, sometimes that of a beggar. Do not, therefore, being a supporting actor, desire the role of the lead.

Up until the time I was cast in 'Star Trek,' the roles were pretty shallow - thin, stereotyped, one-dimensional roles. I knew this character was a breakthrough role, certainly for me as an individual actor but also for the image of an Asian character: no accent, a member of the elite leadership team.

I think it's always hard to find great roles, no matter what age you are. So I always say to people, 'You have to remember that Hollywood is in the business of making movies that they can sell tickets to; they're not in the business of finding great roles for actors.'

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.

The truth of the matter is roles like James Bond are the ones that I look up to as probably the best roles ever to play. So that's probably my ultimate goal one day: to play James Bond.

I don't want to be pretentious about, "yes, I need to move in to the more dramatic roles and express myself and prove to everyone that I'm capable of doing it," it really isn't that, I think that's a bad reason to choose roles. It's more like, who would I be working with and would they be fun to do and entertaining to watch, is it an interesting story or character.

The fact that there aren't an abundance of African-American males that are getting lead roles [and] that are getting roles that have prominence on the big screen. [It's] the same thing from behind the camera; maybe even worse. Coming up, when you're black and you want to direct somebody says, "Oh, you're Spike Lee" or "You're John Singleton."

There are roles I am never considered for. Meryl Streep roles, let's say. Why not? I really wanted to do 'Ironweed,' for example, because the depression era in this country was one of the best for multiracial people, because everybody was poor. Everybody lived in the tents, and under buildings, and under gratings, together.

I'm definitely a fan of sort of dramas, independent sort of social dramas where you play really challenging roles. Every actor wants to play those dark roles and it's definitely true for me and I'd love to kind of challenge myself in any way possible.

When women get great roles in life, they start to get great roles in films and TV. Look at Janet Reno, Madeleine Albright, and Mrs. Thatcher. Because those images are coming at us in life, they are reflected in acting.

There are roles I want that my agency might not want me to do because of the subject matter or whatever. Or there are roles that people won't bring to me because they don't think I'll do it. And that is a big strain because an actor wants to act.

I never wanted to be famous. I want to be more famous than I am so I can get the roles. I hate losing the roles. I was famous more for being around people who were famous, and I hate that kind of fame.

After 'Entourage,' it completely opened up my casting within the industry. People saw me for a lot of roles that I hadn't been seen for before. Older roles. I went out this pilot season for a lot of lawyers and doctors. And cops - which I haven't quite mastered yet; I find that quite difficult.

There are roles I want that my agency might not want me to do because of the subject matter or whatever. Or there are roles that people won't bring to me because they don't think I'll do it. And that is a big strain because an actor wants to act

It's fun to get away from myself for a while when I take on these roles that have very different personalities from my own. I get to say things I normally wouldn't say or act in ways I normally wouldn't act. After all, such roles are more challenging because you really have to immerse yourself in the character.

Everything I've done was above board, as an actor I wanted to do two things. I wanted to entertain as well as get a message across. I never did no pimp roles, no negative roles, or anything like that. I had fun, everything I've done I'm proud to take my mother to.

I am a known actor who wants to challenge himself in difficult roles. I am not a star but an actor, so I am always looking for strong scripts and strong roles.

I've only auditioned for one non-culturally specific role. I went through drama school and studied classic texts and played lead roles in 'Measure for Measure' and 'The Importance of Being Earnest' alongside a very culturally diverse group of acting students. But as soon as we graduate and enter the industry, all of those roles fall away.

I don't really think about roles - "dream roles." It's always about who's gonna be the person on the screen or who's gonna be the person on the stage and who's gonna direct it and put it all together.

It's true in the beginning I started playing villains, and I think that's pretty clear, because if you don't conventionally look a certain way and you've got a certain kind of presence when you're young, then what's available to you is character roles, and the best character roles when you're young tend to be villains.

It's not like you do 'SNL' and then get handed movie roles. You work, you audition for stuff and try to get it. I think, a lot of people, it's the goal to be in movies or just to be working in general. But yeah, some of us get lucky and get some movie roles, and it's nice.

I've definitely taken more family-friendly roles. Honestly, sometimes the edgier acting roles are not age-appropriate for kids but I have taken more projects that I feel have a great message or my kids can watch because of their age and that were just plain fun.

We need to encourage more women to write roles for other women. The great substantive roles aren't being written for women and aren't being produced and directed by women.

Every time there's a really good story, there's women in it. We may not get as many roles, but the roles we get are really good, I think, for the most part.

I so find Harold Pinter and David Mamet's writing to be exciting, and obviously there aren't that many female - at least with Mamet, there aren't that many good female roles. But I always thought it would be interesting to play one of the guy roles.

The BRIC countries - Brazil, India, China, Turkey, South Africa, Indonesia even, and Russia - are now new actors. Over the last eight years, China multiplied by seven its economic presence and penetration in the Middle East. And if this happens on economic terms and there is a shift towards the East, the relationship between these countries and Israel is completely different from the United States. And it means that the challenges are going to be different, because China is not supporting Israel the way the U.S. are supporting Israel.

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].

But what, after all, is faith? It is a state of mind that leads people to believe something - it doesn't matter what - in the total absence of supporting evidence. If there were good supporting evidence then faith would be superfluous, for the evidence would compel us to believe it anyway. It is this that makes the often-parroted claim that 'evolution itself is a matter of faith' so silly. People believe in evolution not because they arbitrarily want to believe it but because of overwhelming, publicly available evidence.

I've always been short and stocky. So when I got into repertory theatre after graduation, I found myself doing character roles: because of my deep voice, shape and height, I was playing 40-year-old, 50-year-old roles at the age of 23.

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.

Yes. Otherwise I could have done a lot of Hollywood movies. After Crouching Tiger I got a lot of offers, but I turned them down because they were all victim roles - poor girls sold to America to be a wife or whatever. I know I have the ability to go deeper, to take on more original roles than that.

A supportive actor's career depends upon the variety that he showcases in all his roles. If his roles will be similar to one another, then his career will not have a long run.

At one stage of my film career, between 2007 and 2010, I had taken up many projects where I played the role of a police officer. Later, I deliberately took a decision to not do any police roles. Since then I've been growing my hair and beard so that I'm not roped in for any such roles.

I think there are great roles for women in television because there is time to allow those characters to evolve. Even if you're the wife or the girlfriend or whatever it is that we women are, playing those things on TV, they are much more drawn out and there are greater arcs for the role. The roles are more integral to the complexity of the story.

The reality is that there are so few roles out there for women and for women of color, and I'm a character actor, this I know. And I'm getting to see more of the roles that are out there, but there aren't many. And zilch have been studio movies. Zilch.

I am constantly visible in TV shows because anybody who is thinking of a role sees me performing on TV and may say, 'Why not him?' That way I am always in the limelight. It's better than running around for good roles. I can't lobby for roles.

One thing that I've been very vocal about roles I take, and my representation has been very smart about, is that I didn't go to Juilliard to be "Thug #2" in movies. I like to be challenged. I'd say that about 40% of the roles I've done have been written for white men.

I really want to do roles that have some substance, and I hope writers give us that importance. I can't alone stand up and demand roles like that. It's a collective thing. Writers have to believe in heroines and understand that there's more to a woman than just her curves. It's not that they can't do it. They just choose not to.

When I started, I was a theater actress, and there were roles that I couldn't imagine not playing, like Rosalind in 'As You Like It.' I used to think I would die if I could play that. But then I started doing movies, and I had children, and I moved to Los Angeles. And now I kind of can't remember what those roles would be.