Quotes About Casting

If they had offered me James Bond, I probably couldn't have gone to England anymore in my life. James Bond with an accent? That would have been something.

When a male actor plays the villainous character in reel life, he might be a relatively good person in real life; but if an actress plays a negative shade in movie , then she might have got her that role just because of someone probably the producer or director.

I don't know what I'm qualified to do, film-wise... So it's really down to a director or a casting director to find something that they think I could do.

When I first started acting, I had all these ideals about the kinds of roles I wanted to play, but the reality is that when you do television - and I do a lot of television - you get cast for qualities that you have as a person. So I look for qualities that I like to portray.

I've never been someone who is cast for having a lovely figure but for whatever qualities I could possibly bring to a role, so I'm still castable.

You can't take on the qualities of a character that you'd never be cast in - and no one would ever cast you in.

I think I probably have a creepy kind of scary quality. Otherwise, I wouldn't get jobs. But I also think it has a little bit to do with, you've done it a couple times, and then people see you that way.

I am half Puerto Rican, a quarter German and a quarter black. That was always a big issue for me - being mixed race - because casting directors tended to be very like, 'OK, are you Hispanic for this role?' 'Or is she going to be African American?'

When we did 'Chicago' and we announced Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere, and Queen Latifah, everybody went crazy and said, 'What are they doing? What are they thinking?' And, now, you look at the movie, and you see that we chose the people that we wanted for that movie, and we were so proud of all of them.

I knew that I wanted to primarily play queer characters.

You aren't allowed to ask at auditions, legally, a person's race.

It should be very normal to see people of different races and ethnic minorities playing different parts.

There's always women of many different races on my shows, and there are always women who look many different ways, but there is still a size thing in this industry. It's hard. I mean to have to say, 'I want a larger woman to be an actor on my shows.' Or, 'Find me a larger woman,' is almost insulting to me.

Producer Ram Mukherjee was making 'Hum Hindustani' and he wanted to cast me opposite Sunil Dutt. But it was decided that I would look diminutive before him and the character too was such that she portrays herself to be opposite of what she is.

Getting a random star whose voice is not the right fit for the character but simply adds star value is avoidable as that can actually irk the audience.

When a subject pops into a director's head, you either fit in there somewhere, or you don't. An actor is only who he is. Especially as you get older, there's not as much of a range of potentially feasible parts.

Romance-comedy films usually get led by the main actor and main actress, just the two of them. Indeed, I was not sure if I was ready to bear the responsibility before casting in '7th Grade Civil Servant,' but I started gaining more and more confidence as the drama went on.

I got called back for 'Game Of Thrones,' and they nearly cast me.

I couldn't get roles as bad guys. They could see John Travolta as a gangster but not me, really. But, you know, that's just how things are.

I'd like to think that the door is always open for just the best actor for the role, you know? Race or gender shouldn't have anything to do with it, unless the character or story is focused on that for some particular reason.

I've not been discriminated against, but I can see it happen. And not just race but gender and sexuality, too. It's stereotyping, lazy casting, which is an issue: that people can't see outside the box.

When I'm a gender capitalist in the fashion world, I basically can go to any casting that I want to as long as somebody likes my face.

Jesse Eisenberg, this little nebbishy guy, as Lex Luthor? For me, that's a genius move.

You get thought of in terms of your last job. So if my last job is that of a meat cleaver-wielding character, I will hardly be cast as some benign, older gentleman.