Anna Kendrick Quotes

The image of an actor plays a huge role in deciding if he or she can experiment with roles.

When you first get out of doing a show for a long time where you played a teenager, casting directors and producers all still look at you as being the character that you played for so long.

You're in everyone's homes every week as this character, and they feel like they know you, and then they start to really define you as this character that you portray.

When someone gets closely related to a character they play on TV, it's very hard to break that mold and go on to do something else.

I always thought, as a kid, if you - and the reason that I sort of stayed away from doing one character on a sitcom is - if you're doing one thing all the time, the audience is going to come up to you and say the one thing all the time.

It's a good thing to be typecast, isn't it?

People have been afraid of me because of the parts I played. Nobody remembers that I was the dad in 'Free Willy.'

You do something, like, something like 'Psych' for long enough, it's tough to shake up people's preconceptions of who you are as a performer.

I really do think that every time you play a role well, you are in danger of being identified with that role until the next big thing comes along.

People had been so attached to the Diane [Cheers] character that audiences and producers found it difficult to think of me in any other terms. It took some time before people would consider me for other parts.

The nature of television is that it's a beast with a lot of opinions. I don't consider myself typecast any more than Neil Patrick Harris was as Doogie Howser or James Gandolifini is as Tony Soprano.

Playing a character for four years, in people's minds, that's who you are.

I hate to talk about typecasting, because being typecast as Columbo ain't cancer.

I used to play a lot of villains. You have to break out of it, and I did.

I started out in the 1970s doing the Wife, the Bimbo, and the Ditz, and if I somehow get a serious role, they all wanna know the same thing: When are you going back to comedy?

People say you get identified with a role, and you get stereotyped, but I haven't found that to be the case.

I have to say a part of me was a little terrified to be only looked at as Shane from 'The L Word.' I was very conscious of doing something that would steer me clear or just steer me in a different direction.

I can understand everybody associates me with Karen, but beyond that, I think after time passes and a few years go by, that sort of becomes a non-issue. That character is far - I mean really, all the characters I've played are pretty far away from what I'm really like.

The first time I ever experienced someone hating something I did on television was on 'Boy Meets World.' I remember these kids coming up to me and calling me a 'home-wrecker,' and so I had flashes of that going into my role on 'Mad Men.'

When you're in the living room every week for nine years as one character, it's hard for some people to see you as someone else.

Actors are always identified with certain parts. To some, Marlon Brando will always be the Godfather. That's just how it is, whether the character happens to be your own personal favorite role or not. You can't ever get away from it.

The problem with the film industry is that once one starts out as a villain, subsequent offers are those of similar roles.

Most people know me from 'The Office,' where I played a guy who grunted out three or four words an episode and was kind of a knucklehead, and so I think it's surprising for people to see me do something like this. But Shakespeare is what I grew up wanting to do.

Whether or not I am a 'character actor' or any other kind of actor, I really don't know. When people call me a 'character actor,' I fail to understand what it means.

An actor's off-screen persona should never overshadow his on-screen characters.