Quotes About Stereotypes

I'd always wanted to do costume drama, but period dramas often become very wooden. Just because they're born in the 1400s, all of a sudden people start losing their sense of humour or their personalities.

Food from Quebec is not known to be amazing. Actually, even though you can eat really, really well in Montreal, it's crazy. It's one of the best cities I eat in, but typical Quebec food is like food from people that work in the woods. It's potatoes, meat and sauce.

People can have so many ill-conceived ideas about me based on the parts that I play. I've had guys, when I've been single, come out of the woodwork to date me and I've found out very quickly that they were expecting some kind of whirlwind, some dramatic crazy person - and that's just not me.

I'm in favour of the old roles being blurred. The old division at school where the boys did metalwork and woodwork and the girls did needlework and domestic science is awful, really - and I'm glad it's gone.

Historically, Hollywood comedy has arrived in skinny envelopes. From fence post Buster Keaton to herky-jerky Jerry Lewis to wiry nerve-bundle Woody Allen to hung-loose Richard Pryor to whippy contortionist Jim Carrey, its comics and clowns have tended to be sliced thin and bendable.

People who I've worked with are always like, 'Why aren't you doing comedy? You're funny!' because they've only seen the one side. I did do the comedy 'Whatever Works,' with Woody Allen and Larry David.

Our distorted media culture sees men as subjects and women as objects; in films, Woody Allen gets older and older and still dates 20-year-old babes; movies about women are called 'chick flicks,' and men make fun of them.

I'm not gay - everybody thinks I am - but I dig 'The L Word.'

Someone once asked me if I was gay. I said, 'Do you think a three-letter word defines the complexity of my humanity?' I avoid the trap of easy definition.

I know now that I began writing in a country where the word 'woman' and the word 'poet' were almost magnetically opposed. One word was used to invoke collective nurture, the other to sketch out self-reflective individualism. Both states were necessary - that much the culture conceded - but they were oil and water and could not be mixed.

When I hear the words 'Women should be barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen,' I think, 'What. A. Dream.' There are no negative connotations to it.

I thought I was attractive when I shot 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding.' Studio executives and movie reviewers let me know I had a confidence in my looks that was not shared by them. In other words, they labeled me with words like overweight, unattractive, unappealing.

Words like 'bossy,' 'shrill,' and 'moody' are used to describe women who speak up at work and give voice to their passion - but I believe this negative commentary is meant to keep critical thinkers quiet.

Men won't read any email from a woman that's over 200 words long.

I think it's true for men and for women, if you are even remotely attractive, people will assume you're just another pretty face and you don't have the work ethic or the talent to put in the time to flesh out a career.

The message was always, 'It's good to be pretty, but don't look like you're trying to be pretty!' Inherent in that is a lot of misogyny, I think, because the implication is, 'You must work hard to achieve a feminine ideal for which society has nothing but contempt.'

Most of your life as an actor in Hollywood, either an actress or an actor, you have to look - you have to work out, you have to look - you rarely get to play someone who's just human, who's real, who is overweight, even not grossly overweight, but who has aspects of just everyday life.

People have this conception of plus size models as girls who aren't fit or don't work out or don't really take care of their bodies.

Cameras love pretty girls and craggy, old character men more than they can take craggy, old character women. But that's what's always happened. Work out how you can fit into it, and make that work. There are never going to be millions of parts for older actresses because there never were.

I'm not your typical quarterback. I don't like when people say, 'Quarterbacks aren't supposed to run,' or, 'Quarterbacks aren't supposed to work out a certain way.'

If I was a boy, nobody would care that I worked out six, seven hours a day when I was 9 years old, no? Why were people always saying 'poor little girl?' I liked to work out and always did more than I was asked to.

I got a lot of flak originally for writing with photographs, because the great cliche in photography is that one photograph is worth a thousand words, and photographers are usually dodo birds anyway.

I grew up in a time when women didn't really do comedy. You had to be homely, overweight, an old maid, all that. You had to play a stereotype, because very attractive women were not supposed to be funny - because it's powerful; it's a threat.

I used to be very interested in the history of women's rights in this country and in other countries. I tried to learn as much as I could about it, and more than anything, I would be called gay. It was phenomenal. But if a boy has something to say, he is appreciated; he's even popular. If a girl says something, it's instantly a threat.