Andrea Riseborough Quotes

There are so many female roles - particularly for young women - that are just somebody's girlfriend or somebody's daughter, or that are accessories to the main story rather than being three-dimensional characters.

I'm so sick of hearing how there's no strong roles for women. I don't care about strong roles. I just want to see women who are characters! A nun, a serial killer, a housewife, as long as there's some depth there.

I do see a lot of roles that are, like, the girlfriend or the love interest or the girl next door. Maybe not totally well-rounded kinds of characters - women who are more of a plot device in a way.

I think that Hollywood misconstrues actresses saying, 'Oh I wanna play a strong female character,' like we all want to play, like, superheroes or something.

I'm interested in playing lots of different complex women.

There aren't enough good roles for strong women. I wish we had more female writers. Most of the female characters you see in films today are the 'poor heartbroken girl.'

I think part of the pressure put on 'strong female characters' comes from the fact that there is so often 'the team girl,' who must be all things to all people. Part of avoiding that is having as many female characters as I can, and allowing them to thrive in their own right, not inside a framework they didn't ask for and don't want.

I became interested in educating people in the variety of ways in which women can express their emotion. Which is much easier to do in a large role than in a supporting role to a male protagonist. In general, the women in a supporting role to a male protagonist - cry a lot.

The parts for women, you're either like the quietly suffering wife or the wild girl.

I think the role of the Bond woman has changed so much over the years that it now doesn't follow a typical archetypical view. Before, it was very much a beautiful woman who didn't contribute much and who usually ended up getting killed or was arm candy for Bond. But now the women in a Bond movie have so much more to offer.

The only reason I would stay away from a period piece is because sometimes the women are painted in a very stereotypical weakling, wallflower way - that's something I don't want to do. I want to show strength in the women I play, and a journey of some sort.

I won't take parts where the female character has no substance.

I'd been so tired of 'strong female characters' for so long by then. I was so tired of the way female strength was made to look cold and humorless; the way it was characterized as deviant and 'unnatural' and always lonely and exceptional. I was tired of the grim undertone of tragedy that lurked under its surface. 'Strong female characters' were never funny, and they never had any fun, either. More often than not, they were celibate, friendless, and clinically depressed. Their monomaniacal devotion to crime fighting made them lean, cranky, and impatient. Naturally, they had axes to grind: they were avenging brides, poker-faced assassins, gloomy ninjas with commitment issues. Who were these characters? What were they trying to tell us? Why didn't they ever say goodbye before hanging up the phone? And why were they always being reborn or remade as killing machines after losing everything they held dear?

I do think that having the villain be a woman is just as feminine, because we're not just saying, 'Women are wonderful and made of marshmallows,' but women can be anything. They can be amazing superheroes, or they can be dastardly villains, and everything in between.

You look at Kerry Washington on 'Scandal,' and a lot of the women on that show in general are very strong, and I think we're seeing it more, and I'm excited because when I was doing Dana Gordon on 'Entourage,' there weren't a lot of strong female characters, which is why I think she came out as such a standout character.

I suppose I have played a lot of put-upon women, but it's never bothered me. They've never been weak - they've always got steel in them.

We love rom-coms, but it's getting to where we don't identify with any of the women in them.

There are now superhero movies fronted by women, and I think directors generally are moving away from that stereotypical woman's role that is just about being flirted with by a man before falling into his arms.

We're so used to seeing women in movies about a romance where they don't seem to have any inner fortitude. They're completely defined by their relationships, and it's hard to engage with those characters and relate to them.

We only see female protagonists who are likeable, with one cute flaw, such as adorable clumsiness. I'm fed up with it.

Films with female protagonists don't attract many eyeballs. Most of them are perceived as feminist films. If Bollywood starts giving women major roles in entertaining movies, then the audience, too, will open up to the idea of watching commercial films in which the actresses do more than just play the role of the hero's love interest.

I never really knew that I would be a lifer of strong female characters, but that seems to be the drops I'm being given, and I'm very happy for them. Hopefully, 'Divergent' will be the next thing.

I guess the characters I play may be at the more destructive edge of the spectrum, more damaged or whatever, but I find a lot of female roles uninteresting.

I'm drawn to female characters; not all of them are strong characters.

We often see literature about women that impair and immerse the women themselves, such as when women are portrayed as objects of consumerism.