Shirley Henderson Quotes

Let's be honest. Physicality is going to have a bearing on the parts you get. And if you think differently, you're in the wrong business.

I used to play a lot of foreign women in my youth because I was prettier then. I would go for interviews, and directors would look at these sultry, exotic looks, hear this clipped accent and think the two don't go together. So they would give me a foreign accent.

When you're trying to look pretty, it's a lot easier to compare you to other people. I always felt intimidated in pilot season trying to audition for 'the girlfriend.' Whereas when it's like, 'you're auditioning for the part of this meth addict, trailer park whatever,' it's like, 'Great!'

I don't exactly set out to only play creepy characters, it's just that a lot of those roles come my way.

I try to explain to people that you get the roles that are right when they're right. If you have a nerd character but you're kind of a cool guy, you're probably not going to get the nerd part. The nerd is going to get the nerd part. You know, someone like me.

You have to carry so many archetypes as an actor, especially as a blonde-haired, blue-eyed one.

If someone plays a brooding actor in a film, people think they're brooding all the time.

I don't know what it is about me that gets cast in specific roles. Some people would say, 'You're just a pretty face,' but on 'Battlestar,' I'm not looking pretty every day. I'm pretty banged up.

Once you don't smile on film, they say, 'Let's have that bloke who doesn't smile.'

I do keep getting these bad girl roles. The funny thing is that, honestly, I don't think I'm believable as these aristocratic mean girls. But I do love playing them.

I play a lot of hard men and gangsters, and I'm not like that at all.

No one ever let me be a bad guy once I started working more frequently after I got out of college and started pursuing acting. I just got all of the good-guy roles because if I walk in the room, not a lot of people believe me as a bad guy.

Mum asks why I am so often cast in adulterous roles. I think it must be because I am fairly flirty.

I think you get the parts that people are comfortable with seeing you play.

It's so funny: I sort of fell into genre roles, but I'm not really a genre guy.

I could play a lot of things. And it's hard for people and logically hard and understandably hard for people to think of me for certain roles.

It can be difficult to get cast as something that is off-center from you, and my biggest fear is to be typecast.

Everyone thinks I am exactly like the characters I play.

It has happened with me that I get a role of a cop for a film. Few directors typecast you if you do that particular role well. But, it is the actor who has to decide whether he fits in that role or not.

I once literally had a casting director ask my agent, 'Can she play anything other than a drunk?'

For most of my career, I've played roles that were written for other actresses.

It's interesting to me that I get cast as mothers and really maternal, sweet, nice people... Maybe I have a vulnerability or something; maybe that's what it is.

So when you make an impression in a certain kind of role, that tends to be the type of role that you get offered.

A lot of film stars are just playing themselves in different frocks.

Once you get into a part, and someone sees you, you get asked to do it again.