Jeffrey Tambor Quotes

I play very sweet characters, so people look at me like I'm the kid from 'The Wonder Years,' rather than Brad Pitt.

I started out in the theater when I was a young actor, so I've always tried to move from one medium to the other.

I really fought to make my character not a stereotype. I play a soap star with dyed blonde hair.

I've played a baseball player a few times, but in my career I've been blessed to have played a wide range of characters.

When I was a young actor... the more different you were from the part you played, the more talent it reflected.

I love my accent, I thought it was useful in Gone In 60 Seconds because the standard villain is upper class or Cockney. My Northern accent would be an odd clash opposite Nic Cage.

I'm not a nerd, I play one on TV.

I think knowing where you can generally fit is important, but the fun thing about being an actor is sometimes stretching beyond that stereotype and stretching beyond the box that people put you in.

I'm certainly a young actor. I'm certainly those two things. Actually, I'm not even young anymore; I'm 29. So, I'm an actor.

I've played villains on stage - you know, the Iagos and so on - but I think of myself as a funny person. I mostly did comedies before I did TV work.

As a young actor, I worked with Kevin McNally and have always thought him brilliant.

Well, I play Jews and parrots. Parrots are how I've branched out.

When I was a kid doing television, they'd stick a leather jacket on me, and I would be the thug.

I'm from New York; I've been in show business all my life. I'm a wild and crazy gal, yet I always play these soft, warm, loving earth mothers. It's a pain in the butt. I'm a femme fatale!

I've done a lot of work other than sci-fi, and between half-hour comedy, stage, and various movie roles, I've really tried to avoid being typecast.

I know as an actor there is a certain liberation auditioning for a role that has no beauty requirements.

You have a dramatic portion of your television program and you treat it dramatically, and then you have a comedic portion of your program, and you treat it differently. Why do you change who are between the two pieces? You're the same person. Just go.

It's so funny because the roles that I've been offered in the indie film world have been similar to each other, and the roles that I've been offered in the TV world have been similar to each other, but the TV roles and the indie film roles have been completely different.

Hal Holbrook was in one of my first television movies when I was about 18 or 19. He'd made such a strong impression on me and a lasting one in terms of what being an actor was.

The most experience I had in the criminology field is playing a thug as an actor. That was my first paid job. The police academy at the college was paying people to reenact the calls that potential cops would get. So I got to play thugs and people who were unruly.

I haven't been offered a lot of comedy. In theater, I've done quite a bit of comedy or dramas that included a lot of funny stuff. But in my TV work, those aren't the roles that I've been offered.

With film, you read the whole script three or four times, and you really have a solid blueprint of who your character is. Whereas in television, that blueprint is constantly changing and adapting, and sometimes you have to take a risk.

The actors that inspire me are the comedians and the people able to shape-shift into different roles and into different media.

The thing as an actor is you get a sense of what a show is like the minute you walk on the set.

I've had a wonderful time in 'Foyle's War' and I don't mind being typecast. But I'm not prim. I'm chaotic, happy, and desperate to have some laughs. I'd love to do a comedy next, or something modern.