Quotes on Roles

Men are boys for such a long time and really don't start getting the great roles until they're in their mid-thirties. But then they've got a long time to do them, whereas for women, it's all about playing younger and younger and younger.

I have a friend who says that roles choose you at the time that you need them most, and you have to believe, as an actor, if you didn't get a part that you really, really wanted, and it went to someone else, it was because it was theirs to begin with.

I think anger does fuel a successful acting career. To play the great roles, you have to learn how to blaze.

Women often find great roles in revolution, simply because the rules fall apart and everyone has agency, anyone can act.

Between parts I was too old for and roles that were too overwhelming, out of reach then for my voice. I carved out a niche with the Wagnerian repertoire since I am attracted by its theatrical intensity.

In Hollywood, way too often, the goal for actresses is to get cast in roles as the wife or the mother or a relationship that somehow orbits around the man, whereas 'Sex And The City' had these characters where the women had their own independent stories.

I've been on the wrong end of violence, and I've done violence myself... I refuse to glorify violence in my movie and television roles.

No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it.

Creative experimentation propels our culture forward. That our stories of innovation tend to glorify the breakthroughs and edit out all the experimental mistakes doesn't mean that mistakes play a trivial role. As any artist or scientist knows, without some protected, even sacred space for mistakes, innovation would cease.

I think a role model is a mentor - someone you see on a daily basis, and you learn from them.

In my career, there have been roles I haven't taken because someone involved with the project gave me a bad vibe. I don't care how much money is on the table: No job is worth feeling uneasy every day.

Mankind's role is to fulfil his heaven-sent purpose through a sincere heart that is in harmony with all creation and loves all things.

Typically, when you look for role models, you want someone who has your interests and came from the same background. Well, look how restricting that is. What people should do is take role models a la carte. If there's someone whose character you appreciated, you respect that trait.

Americans need to educate themselves, from elementary school onward, about what their country has done abroad. And they need to play a more active role in ensuring that what the United States does abroad is not merely in keeping with a foreign policy elite's sense of realpolitik but also with the American public's own sense of American values.

The progression of roles you take strings together a portrait of an actor, but it's a completely random process.

My childhood was influenced by the roles my father played in his movies. Whether Abraham Lincoln or Tom Joad in the Grapes of Wrath, his characters communicated certain values which I try to carry with me to this day.

When I went into 'Fiddler,' I wondered about the response I'd get - the backlash because I'm openly gay. There was none. I toured Canada and America, and not one single review suggested that I played the role gay or that I seemed anything but Tevye.

No city in the world, not even Athens or Rome, ever played as great a role in the life of a nation for so long a time, as Jerusalem has done in the life of the Jewish people.

Boyhood proves that there's still good roles for women over 40, as long as you get hired when you're under 40.

The role of a clown and a physician are the same - it's to elevate the possible and to relieve suffering.

Part of the role of photography is to exaggerate, and that is an aspect that I have to puncture. I do that by showing the world as I really find it.