Kurt Fuller Quotes

Unless you burst into movies as a sex goddess, you're likely to play wives and mothers. I came into movies as a teenager in 'They Shoot Horses, Don't They' (1969) playing a pregnant waif from the Ozarks. I didn't get a chance to burst into movies in 'Body Heat.' My career isn't based on having a 23-inch waist and a big bust, though I do.

I guess they often cast me as the bad guy, because I'm not, er, conventional looking. I look sort of violent. I'm the odd one out, the outsider.

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.

I have about as much control over how I look as the guy who's short and looks more like a character actor - we both have the same drive to be actors and we both have the same drive to assume these different characters, it's just harder for me to get the chance because they look at me and say, 'Oh, he's this type,' and they stamp me.

I get told I'm too good-looking for a lot of roles. They don't write roles people would think I'm supposed to play as often as they used to - the rom-com pretty-boy storylines.

I'm not homely enough to play the nerdy girl and not nearly pretty enough to play the pretty girl.

But I've lost parts because of my looks. I auditioned to star with Richard Dreyfuss in 'The Buddy System.' The producers said no one would believe he would leave me for another woman. They just couldn't see me with him.

It's hard for the American industry to see a Latin actor playing something that is not a gardener or someone in a cartel. It's hard to find the material that tells a story of a Latin or European Spanish guy that is not a bad guy.

The real way I became a model is I won a genetic lottery, and I became the recipient of a legacy.

Maybe I'm too masculine. Casting directors cast in their own, or an idealized image. Maybe I don't look like anybody's ideal.

Before 9/11, I was playing a wide range of characters. I would play a lover, a cop, a father. As long as I could create the illusion of the character, the part was given to me. But after 9/11, something changed. We became the villains, the bad guys. I don't mind to play the bad guy as long as the bad guy has a base.

Directors are not worried about casting beautiful women, but they are not sure that they want to cast great-looking men. My looks have prevented people from seeing my work.

I keep getting cast as this bad guy, and I don't know why.

My label is to play bad guys of Latin origin in American movies. I'm happy with that label. I prefer to play that than to play a city boy. The bad guy is always something very tempting for the audience.

I had people in 'Entertainment Weekly' talking about how they wanted to throttle me because they thought I was too disgustingly cute, as if that were my fault, you know, as if that was my fault, not the fault of directors and producers and such.

There's two types of character actors. There's character actors who play all different characters. Or there's actors who always play the same part; they're just a bit funny-looking.

A lot of times, especially with TV, I would get these scripts, and I'm like, 'Oh, they want me to be the good-looking guy who's a little bit of a rascal.' It's just boring.

With 'Broadcast News,' it became a non-issue, and with 'The Piano,' it became a non-issue. Both parts were written for more statuesque women. It was nice to change people's minds about that, because that's neither here nor there.

Well, in the '80s and '70s, with the exception of Sidney Poitier and Brock Peters, maybe Ivan Dixon, if you were as big and black as I am, you were a bad guy. Simple. Because in real life, I scare people.

Since I am a turbaned Sardar, I can only play Sardar roles. Either that or producers should be willing to alter the script to accommodate my physical appearance. But I won't call this a restriction.

I wasn't, like, pretty enough to be the ingenue; I wasn't 'character' enough to be the goofball sidekick. I'm kind of ethnically ambiguous.

I'm lucky: I've got great photogenic eyes. You're up and running if you've got that and one brain cell to attach it to.

I didn't come up in a culture or society that looked on me as a movie star. I was the bad guy. I was fortunate enough to be cast in some roles that weren't bad, were positive.

Because of the way I look, I tend to play bad guys.

I understand that, being born with a certain face, people want to see me in certain roles. But one needs to break that image by doing different kinds of films.