Shirley MacLaine Quotes

I'll never accept that I'm a sex symbol. That will mean that someone is a bit too fond of himself. If it happens, I think it's certainly going to be odd. People shouldn't see me as a sex symbol. I'm really just Henry. I'm just telling a story. I could be playing an incredibly unpleasant character who's not sexually attractive at all in my next movie. So I've no expectations at all.

Yeah, I am a character actor.

I had a very hard time accepting myself as a character actress because I wanted to be glamorous and a leading lady like everybody else. I looked in the mirror and thought I looked pretty good, but casting didn't ever see me that way.

I'm not a personality actress. I never have been. I have been a character actress.

I was never the ingenue or the pretty girlfriend of Tom Cruise in a movie. I didn't have that career, so I don't have to compete on that level.

I think of myself more as a character actor than that ingenue leading lady, who started out something like Michelle Pfeiffer, or Jessica Lange. I'm a bit quirkier than that.

I think I'm a character actress in a leading lady's body, but the industry doesn't really see me that way.

I don't think of myself as a character actress - that's become a phrase which means you've had it.

The whole sex-symbol thing is part of what I do as an actress. It's a kind of character I play. It's part of me, but not the whole me.

I didn't decide to be a character actress.

I just don't think of myself as a movie star - I'm an actress.

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.

My whole career I played these girls sort of 18 to 23.

I was the nerdy one. I always played those kind of characters until Mad Men.

I'd be happy to play anyone's girlfriend. I'm happy to be working, ever. It's not an intentional thing to play these messed up, crazy characters, but I'm happy to do it 'cause someone's got to.

Well, I'm a character actor, and actually throughout my life I've... I have relatively speaking played few heroic leads, but I've done it.

The great exception to that, of course, is Johnny Depp, who is absolutely the ultimate character actor. Johnny Depp is the future of the character actor and thanks to his success maybe we will see the return of an era when my sort of actor is back in vogue. It's not in vogue for me to be in Hollywood movies as lots of different people.

I was born a character actor. I was never really a leading man type.

I never started out to be an action actor. I was an ensemble actor.

I am definitely a lot more girly that the characters that I play.

I think that my looks through the years have served me well because I was never a great beauty and I was never cast as a great beauty. My looks were not part of my transportation - certainly not in the typical leading lady role - so I never leaned on it and I never really made that a high value.

I wanted to be an actor. Maybe a comic actor, but an actor. That's what got me into acting was putting on an act, because in life, I wasn't funny and I felt on stage or in the movies, I could do whatever I wanted to. I was free.

I've never thought of myself as an actor, so somebody recognizing me for that would be a real shock.

I love character roles. I'm happier in them. I look for roles that have some kind of complexity.

I definitely want to do films. To see a character out from beginning to end in a matter of a hundred somewhat pages and then move on to the next role, is fascinating.