Wilmer Valderrama Quotes

When an American person hears you speak a different language, you're automatically the bad guy.

I was always curious about the anxiety a person would feel when you open your mouth and you have an accent. You could have a Ph.D. or be a lawyer, but as soon as you say something, you may be diminished in the eyes of someone else.

Just because I don't speak English with an accent anymore doesn't mean that I'm better than the people who do.

People with accents exist and just because they have an accent doesn't mean they're less intelligent or what-have-you.

Trouble is, some accents lend themselves to comedy.

Stereotypes and perceptions have their real effects.

As far as getting work, no one thought I spoke English. It was absolutely ridiculous. I'd show up at a meeting and they'd be like, 'Oh my God, you speak English! That's so cool.' They didn't really know what to do with me.

I know Asian actors out there won't even audition for a role that have an accent. But for me, I was the kid with an accent. I still have an accent to some degree.

It is wrong to judge a person based on the language they know.

I always wonder whether I'll get treated differently with a different accent.

I do have a Mexican accent, but that doesn't mean that I'm a Latin vamp.

I have been a victim of stereotypes. I come from Latin America and to some countries, we are considered 'losers,' drug traffickers, and that is not fair because that is generalizing.

Yeah, I'm sure there are stereotypes of Asian people.

If my accent betrayed my foreign birth, it also stamped me as an enemy, in the imagination of the producers.

Being blonde means people decide on sight that you are much prettier and nicer than you really are, just as Americans automatically add 10 points to someone's IQ when they hear an English accent. Fact.

If you are black on television, you are probably going to be some kind of thug, gangster, or portrayed in a negative light. If you are some type of Muslim, you are going to be blowing stuff up. If you are Hispanic, you are going to be some type of gangbanger. I've felt like this for years.

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

People are very ready to criticize other people's accents. There's no correlation between accents and intelligence or accents and criminality, but people do make judgments.

There really are a lot of stereotypes I fight.

Has my accent held me back? I don't believe it has at all. I think it can be a colourful accent.

The problem with labels is that they lead to stereotypes and stereotypes lead to generalizations and generalizations lead to assumptions and assumptions lead back to stereotypes. It’s a vicious cycle, and after you go around and around a bunch of times you end up believing that all vegans only eat cabbage and all gay people love musicals.

(Stereotyping) is only for those without the imagination to see people as they are instead of being like someone else they understand.

When an English man speaks well, for example now, and this is another way of putting us down, they say he's "eloquent" you see. "Oh, eloquent chap they are!" An Irish person speak well, they say, "Ah, you have the gift of the gab." "Ah, you kissed the blarney stone." You see, all of this putting us down.

Prejudice is a product of ignorance that hides behind barriers of tradition.

There were a lot of kids from Puerto Rico at my high school in Florida; people always assumed I was Puerto Rican. Even now in California, I get talked to on the street in Spanish constantly!