Quotes About Typecasting

I played Sanjay Dutt's role in 'Son of Sardar' in a Kannad film. But because roles aren't being discussed and published that much people tend to think that I am doing only negative roles.

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.

People are so used to seeing John Goodman as a loveable dad or the quirky characters he played in the Coen Brothers films.

Hollywood will put you in a box, so to speak. Some people will have seen you in 'La Bamba' or another dramatic film and think, 'Okay, that's what Lou does.' But they don't really have an idea of the range or diversity that I can bring to a project.

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.

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.

The nightmare of a film career, or at least the challenge of one, is that you're rarely going to get the opportunity to explore character because once people see you in one thing, you know, they want to see that again.

If you're ever being typecasted - as most of us are - that's a great way to be typecasted. So, 'The Rifleman' is still popular with a lot of people, and I'm proud to be associated.

I don't like to do what I call 'the grunters' - a character who sits at a table and grunts and young people make fun of. I turn a lot of those down.

Even at drama school if there was a part of some eastern European thug it would be me.

I'm trying to fight typecasting as hard as I can, while I have time.

I was warned not to do it. Actors who play Jesus are supposed to have a hard time getting other roles to follow, but I felt this was a myth. After all, how can you be typecast as Christ?

If you are working in the Hindi film industry, you cannot escape playing a police guy more than three times.

One of the things that I found very confronting in my early working life was that people thought I was some sensitive doe-eyed lovelorn boy, because they'd seen me do that a couple of times. What tends to happen is you get a run of similar roles.

If I look at Dad's earlier work - 'Bandini,' 'Satyakam,' 'Chupke Chupke,' 'Jeevan Mrityu' - and then his later work, I realize that when something works, the industry doesn't want you to do anything else. They just typecast and milk you.

I feel blessed that I am able to play really dark guys in a business where they usually want you to play the same character over and over. Poor Michael Rapaport will being playing white homeboys till the day he dies. That's not the kind of career I want.

When you first get out of doing a show for a long time where you played a teenager, casting directors and producers all still look at you as being the character that you played for so long.

I was lucky enough to be a "type." Sort of a bad-guy type at the time, because I was tall and I had dark eyes. A lot of times, you don't have to be good; you just have to be the right type.

From the time I became an actor my whole approach was to try to do as many different things as possible. It never occurred to me that I might be typecast.

In my career, I have played a gangster, an ex cop, a journalist and a film director. Yet, the label of a serial kisser refuses to leave me.

I know an actor who would play one type of part but could never get cast as tough. Once he got cast as tough, as a cop, he only got offered cop roles. It's a funny business in that regard. It's all about perception.

When someone gets closely related to a character they play on TV, it's very hard to break that mold and go on to do something else.

Hollywood likes to put actors in boxes, and it likes to put Asian actors in really small boxes.

As a jobbing actor, you can't afford to be choosy; if you're typed, you're generally working. I still feel that way, and the thing is, even within the horror genre, I now get to play all kinds of different roles.