Quotes About Stereotypes

The French are endowed with bigger limbs; those of the Spaniards are stronger; they have a very slim waist. The French fight with more ferocity than advise. The Spaniards the opposite.

And one of the things that I learned was you can't generalise at all about a woman in a veil. You can't think you know her story, because she will confound you over and over again. She may be an engineer or a diplomat or a doctor. Or she may be an unbelievable babe with bleached hair down to her waist.

People equate health to a picture in a magazine of a 6-foot-tall thin woman with her skin rolls Photoshopped and her waist edited to be tiny, so when they see bodies that jiggle and move around like they do, they assume it's wrong.

You get into these executive offices, and people say, 'Oh, we have this project. Wait a minute, guys, we need diversity - let's choose a black actor for this; let's choose a Hispanic actor for this,' instead of saying, 'That's not diverse, that's just normal. That's what makes up America.'

I want to say that I can be Moroccan and speak about someone without speaking about his nationality. Because, you know, I have the feeling that when you come from Morocco, when you come from Afghanistan, when you come from Africa, Occidental people always wait for you to write a novel about identity.

I know some black actresses who have to wait every 19 films for a role. I can be cast in practically every one as a young white male.

The British tourist is always happy abroad as long as the natives are waiters.

Pre-'Tokyo Drift,' I was like: 'Am I gonna play Yakuza #1 and Chinese Waiter #2 for the rest of my life? Is America even ready for an Asian face that speaks English, that doesn't do Kung Fu?'

Now, if you are like me - if you are like practically anybody in America - then you probably hold some negative opinions about the French, based upon movies, rumors, recent headlines, unfortunate run-ins with Parisian waiters, or... you know... all that unpleasantness surrounding the Vichy regime.

In all likelihood, you've been treated by a Muslim doctor or served by a Muslim waiter or worked beside a Muslim computer programmer. Even if you think, 'I don't know any Muslims,' it's probably not true.

You get stared at the whole time. I first noticed that when I was about 13. I was very shy. Being considered beautiful, I always felt that people were waiting for something more. I imagined you were supposed to have an intellectual ability - and I'm making no claims here - proportional to your supposed good looks.

I went out for a film where they wanted seven brothers and one sister, so I was there for half a day while they were waiting for 'Archie' to read for a boy... I've had drivers come to pick me up in England looking for a blond, blue-eyed Scottish boy.

Asians narratively in shows are insignificant. They're the cop or the waitress or whatever it is. You see them in the background.

I am very gender fluid and feel more like I wake up every day sort of gender neutral. I cop a fair bit of flack for going from 'such a babe to such a boy.'

I thought it must be desperate to be old. To wake up in the morning and remember that you were ancient - and so behave that way. I thought old people were full of aches and pains and horrible illnesses.

Each section of the British Isles has its own way of laughing, except Wales, which doesn't.

It used to hurt me when people said I was hiding in Wales.

Stereotypes do exist, but we have to walk through them.

One of the big misconceptions about me is that I walk around in mini-skirts and high heels twenty-four seven and go to the gym in heels.

There's this idea supposedly that we preachers are supposed to walk about with sandals and ride bicycles. That's nonsense.

I haven't deliberately set out to play the blonde bombshell in my movies. In fact, it's probably been quite the opposite. After the success of The Mask, I wasn't offered all that many blonde bombshell parts, to be honest. I think people believed from the beginning that I could actually walk and talk at the same time.

In England or America, actors do not have to cater to an image. In India, it is almost demanded of us. Very seldom do you get a film where you can walk away from your image.

There is a lot men don't know about women. And I'm not just talking about how you manage to leave the bathroom smelling like a tropical rainforest after you shower or how you're able to walk in shoes that rely on nothing more than the support of two five-inch toothpicks.

Any time I claimed to be white, that would be unacceptable. It just doesn't make sense in people's minds. If I'm white, how can I walk through a department store and still have people scared that I'm going to rob them? Which, that can still happen.