Donna Lynne Champlin Quotes

In the beginning, I was always playing some kind of gangbanger and the token Mexican dude who didn't have a lot of lines but was in the entire movie. At the same time, everyone gets typecast, and I decided that if I was going to play a stereotypical role, I was going to play it like a three-dimensional character.

I'd like to talk in my own accent, but then there's that thing about getting typecast as, 'The British guy.' The role that makes you, that's normally what you're cast as forever more. Like, if I did a huge film with my British accent, that would be that.

I get typecast as doctors, principals, middle-management-type guys - which, when you look at me, you realize is completely against my physical characteristics. I should be an action hero. So I don't understand what's going on.

Once you do one bad guy, usually all you get offered is bad guys. But I've been able to do different things.

I've always wanted to play a normal woman, and I think I have been offered these parts where I play a kook because I'm not the idea of what a normal woman is.

Usually, the roles that you get offered that are the mom roles are very much the mom role.

I am bored of playing the bechari, behenji type of roles.

Depictions of race have changed so much since, like, the '50s, where white people just played every race. But the pendulum swings both ways: I'm Filipino-American. If I had to wait for a Filipino role to come out to get work, I couldn't eat. There are barely any roles out there.

I get cast a lot as the best friend or the assistant.

I was often getting hired to play sociopaths and psychopaths and stuff, which is really funny.

Maybe I don't have an accurate view of myself. For instance, I keep getting cast as 'The Beautiful Girl,' but I don't happen to think I'm beautiful.

When I joined Bollywood, I too wanted decent and challenging roles but there were no offers. Directors and producers look at me as a woman who is willing to expose and that is the only reason they want to sign me.

I don't mind playing gay because there's a whole plethora of gay roles out there, but if I get asked to play one more Southern hairdresser, I'm going to scream.

People always say, 'Oh, you've played a lot of waifs... ' but they were just girls. It's just that a lot of those everyday characters had never been on the screen before. I do hope I didn't get typed. I feel myself that I tried to do different things with those women.

I am frustrated at misconceptions of me, and being cast in a role.

Now it comes to this stage of my career when I get to play the wicked witch all the time. You know you start off with Cinderella and then you end up playing the stepmothers.

Let's be real: more often than not, Hollywood does not have three-dimensional characters for women to play.

I've done bit parts on shows where I've been the fat girl or the punk rocker.

Coming off 'House of Cards,' playing someone so straight-laced, I was getting offered a lot of F.B.I. agents.

My talent is universal, and acting is a craft that can be used anywhere, unless ethnicity comes into play, and then, looks matter.

I have this demure, girl-next-door image and audiences will not accept me in glamour roles.

If I had taken 'Gilligan's Island,' I would never have gotten 'Coach' because I would have been established as Gilligan.

The typecasting always happens but I am a very positive person.

I entered the acting world at a time when there was a higher demand for Middle Eastern actors in the post-9/11 world, and yeah, the roles weren't great.

I've played a jock a lot, but pretty nuanced jocks.