Quotes About Stereotypes

Coming from the Midwest, I didn't know about stand-up as an art. I just thought stand-up comedians were old men in suits talking about their wives.

Unless you burst into movies as a sex goddess, you're likely to play wives and mothers. I came into movies as a teenager in 'They Shoot Horses, Don't They' (1969) playing a pregnant waif from the Ozarks. I didn't get a chance to burst into movies in 'Body Heat.' My career isn't based on having a 23-inch waist and a big bust, though I do.

In elite, primarily white institutions, there are many blacks who have white wives. So much so that sometimes there is almost the assumption that I would be married to a white woman.

People in Hollywood go home to their wives and children who look like they do. If you're in that position, your natural thought pattern is sometimes to think, 'Superman, oh yeah he's white.' You can't get mad at somebody for doing that. It's the world they live in and for some, they only live in that bubble.

This idea that we should be best friends with our partner of the opposite gender leads toward tremendous frustration. Did you ever notice that while men often refer to their wives as best friends, women usually refer to another woman in that way?

It was always the cliche of men leaving their wives for younger women. The playing field is sort of even now. Women make their own salaries. They can do the exact same thing and can have a younger man.

We started by playing girls who only married at the end of the picture. We didn't play wives. That came later. But the most dreadful thing was when a star had to play a mother. That was the beginning of her professional end.

When I came to America, there were two kinds of women: women who looked serious and who didn't wear color and print, and women who looked girly and feminine and like second wives.

When men get together, they moan about their wives. The commentary provided on marriage between groups of men is typically one from a viewpoint that assumes marriage to be life's greatest, most unfun mistake. Not only is it often as disingenuous as Joe Biden's hairline, but it's incredibly harmful.

Men get together, and they complain about their wives because it's what they feel they're supposed to do. It's as phony as your frat-buddy's stupid tribal tattoos, and everybody knows it.

It has been very rare to see a black woman as a protagonist. And also as three-dimensional people - mathematicians, mothers, wives, complicated people, not perfect.

For older actresses, the story is still the same. They are either subservient wives taking care of their husbands - like that typical age-old character of a woman, who serves her husband a hot cup of tea as soon as he comes home; or they are mothers dependent on their sons.

I hear all the time that boys don't like stories about girls. Which never made much sense to me. Wasn't 'Terminator' about a girl? And 'Alien'? Hell, I grew up on 'The Wizard of Oz.' People enjoy stories about anything if they're good stories.

I think that there is incredible prejudice about witches while there is no prejudice about wizards. Words are very important, and I'm really into destroying myths.

We've gone from the image of India as land of fakirs lying on beds of nails, and snake charmers with the Indian rope trick, to the image of India as a land of mathematical geniuses, computer wizards, software gurus.

I think thats something that is frustrating - that you audition, and say you get a role and people think you were the best person to play this role, but it gets downplayed as being woke because, I dont know, they think networks are trying to tick a box.

When Wolf Blitzer wears a not-so-great tie, how much e-mail do you think he gets? My point is, for women, unfortunately, appearance is part of the job.

In our society leaving baby with Daddy is just one step above leaving the kids to be raised by wolves or apes.

I feel very fortunate that I was able to be cast in roles that showed the humanity, if you will, of usually stereotypical Indian characters that made up a lot of film, like the Pawnee in 'Dances with Wolves.'

At times, you're welcome, depending on what's being cast. 'Dances with Wolves' - they wanted authentic-looking Indians in the film, and so they got it. The same was true with 'The Last of the Mohicans' and 'Geronimo.'

When I first started in this field there were all kinds of stereotypes about autism, as if these were children from another planet, or children who had been brought up by wolves, that they weren't part of our population and were somehow separate.

A naked woman in heels is a beautiful thing. A naked man in shoes looks like a fool.

This idea of, oh, poor little black person, oh, poor little poor person, oh, poor little woman, oh, poor little indigenous person - everybody's a poor little something! I don't try and please everybody.

Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. That's their natural and first weapon. She will need her sisterhood.