Mary Steenburgen Quotes

I think of myself as a Hollywood hillbilly, but I'm sick of all these questions people ask about Alabama. 'Do you have an outhouse?' 'Is there a lot of inbreeding in your family?' They think all Southerners don't have computers and TV sets and that we're all still living in 1862.

There are no worse cliches than southern cliches. They make my skin crawl.

There is a misconception that I've experienced in my life about people that live in the South. I got sent away to school in Connecticut in the late Eighties, and kids were honestly asking me, 'Do people there wear shoes?'

If you talk with a Southern accent, it's perceived as though you are slow. That's not the case. I've met just as many dumb people who talk without an accent as with.

Sometimes stereotyping happens not because of any nefarious reasons but rather because people don't know who you are or where you come from, so they go for the broad strokes about you, your culture, your faith, all that.

Because when you watch U.S. television, all the presenters and reporters, they're all out of central casting.

Everyone has these ideas, especially about the middle of the country, about people being backwards and three-toothed.

The hardest thing about living in Canberra is that almost everyone who doesn't live here asks: 'Why on earth would you live in Canberra?' Loudly, and in a way they would never use to discuss anywhere else. And they never listen to the answer.

If, as a Spaniard, I am so often offended by the stereotypes that abound regarding my country, how can I accept and repeat the ones that fall even more heavily upon Israel?

America has this understanding of Africans that plays like National Geographic: a bunch of Negroes with loincloths running around the plain fields of Africa chasing gazelles.

And hey-the psychiatrist in the show is Italian also. So people are going to focus on what they want to focus on. There's not much you can do about that.

Some of you think an Indian is like a wild animal. This is a great mistake.

I don’t watch TV because every time I do all I ever see is that fucking nigger.

Pakistanis are rarely introduced in popular media in any form except as a member of your friendly terrorist cell next door.

If you're someone who doesn't have Muslim friends, and your only experience of Islam is what you see on the news - the angry man with a beard doing or saying something terrible - then you may inadvertently associate that with Islam and think that is what it's all about.

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.

I've had battles with writers who live in L.A. and were writing southern characters, because they felt like if they wrote 'Sugar' and 'Honey' at the end of every sentence, that would make it southern.

I find that Americans completely lack sensibility and good taste. They are boring, and they all have faces like unbaked rolls.

We are in a diversity age. I talk about the lack of diversity for black Americans, but what about the Asian Americans? You don't see them very often. They have a show called 'Fresh off the Boat.' No one is talking about that show. I saw it, and I found that show completely offensive, but I'm not Asian American.

I like the South: Southern literature and that relationship between grotesqueness and living below the Mason-Dixon line. But I also understand that people view it as a limitation - as an actor and as a person - perceptions that are really wrong: that you are ignorant and possibly illiterate, or that it's cute.

Hip-hop is very diverse, but if you only focus on one aspect of it, then what you get is this image of Black America that is completely contrary to what actually goes on.

Black women do not have as many positive images in the media as we should.

I've run into people who say, 'I know what you're like: You're a Boston guy.' That's so weird. This person who doesn't know anything about me thinks they know a lot because of the city I grew up in, which, to me, is a meaningless label. There are all kinds of people from Boston.

I think 'The Sopranos' probably solidifies the misconception that people have about New Jersey to begin with. Because you're from Jersey, and everybody has an accent, you are perceived a certain way. I don't know if they are jealous or in awe or look down their nose at you, but that's the way life is. If you don't like it, change the channel.

If you want to underestimate me because I speak like a Mancunian, like the people I grew up with, then so be it at your peril.