Quotes About Authenticity

At the end of the day, I'm a human being and I just think that's what it is. Challenging stereotypes by just being who I am.

I never feel confined by gender, by labels, by expectations, by stereotypes. I'm free to be myself.

Every quirky girl doesn't have to be the best-friend character. It's a very limiting and self-fulfilling prophecy. People only write things that will get green-lit, so they write to those stereotypes.

There would always be scripts that came along that I turned down, like Gang Member #5 - roles that were just stereotypes.

My goal is to be myself, and to challenge stereotypes, and to follow the rules, and break them, and make new rules. It's not about doing something that's already been done. That would be silly.

Even the 'Negro' shows like 'Amos and Andy' and 'Beulah' are written largely by white writers - the better to preserve the stereotypes, I imagine.

In many ways, being yourself is dispelling stereotypes.

We've got these stereotypes, and I think there can be some trouble when we force these on people.

Normally you read a screenplay - and I read a lot of them - and the characters don't feel like people. They feel like plot devices or cliches or stereotypes.

I've never liked to play stereotypes.

As an actor, you read so many scripts and parts written for Asian-specific characters, and you see a lot of stereotypes and a lot of one-note characters, especially in comedy.

For a while, I was feeling like I was always playing characters that weren't specifically Korean or specifically Asian, even - that they were characters who were originally written white, and then they would cast me. And I used to consider that a badge of honor because that meant I had avoided stereotypes.

People obsess about casting and representation, but really, all the real work is behind the camera. Casting an Asian American into a bad role where they're shoehorned into these stereotypes is worse than not having cast them at all.

I am conscious of the community that I'm representing and don't play into stereotypes.

You don't need to be a stereotypical basketball player to be successful. You can be yourself. You can kick it with artists, you can kick it with nerds.

You know, I'm from the South, and I wasn't interested in perpetuating a stereotypical southern character.

I'm a very stereotypical person... and that's part of my flavor, I guess, because I tell it like it is.

You see a lot of people out there that say they're country, and they do their little things that are stereotypical country things, but being country is a way of life.

From the moment I could express myself, I acted like a stereotypical girl and insisted that I was a girl. I wasn't just a boy who liked girly things - I knew I was a girl.

Everything big-budget or stereotypical I was offered after 'Slumdog Millionaire' was a huge no-no.

Because I sidestepped all the stereotypical roles, in a way I've made a career out of not being Asian - a lot of my roles weren't written as Asian - so there's an impulse in me that wants to take a U-turn and play a very grounded, real Asian character, maybe an immigrant.

My first reaction to being pigeonholed or pushed into certain confines is to be like, 'No, I'm the opposite,' you know? Like, don't put me in a stereotypical black-girl category, because I'm not like that; I'm doing this thing over here.

I tend to write a lot of love songs, but I always want there to be something real and authentic that people can connect to, and I want to not just do it in a stereotypical way.

I was journaling in Florence, and I was like, 'Oh, I have to come out of the closet. I have to break up with this guy' - he was my 'roommate.' So that was my awakening moment, when I stepped into my own skin while in a foreign country by myself and had a very stereotypical moment of revelation.