Sarah Paulson Quotes

I think if actors are successful at one thing, they paint themselves into a corner sometimes, and what's the fun in that?

The trap for an actor is that you become too successful at what you're trying to do, and you can find yourself stuck there.

One of the things that would steer me away from a franchise is that I'm playing the same character all the time and I wouldn't want to be known for that.

It's a luxurious complaint to have as an actor, but playing the same character for many years can become routine.

If I look at Dad's earlier work - 'Bandini,' 'Satyakam,' 'Chupke Chupke,' 'Jeevan Mrityu' - and then his later work, I realize that when something works, the industry doesn't want you to do anything else. They just typecast and milk you.

But once you have some success in one style, the business wants to lock you in that vein forever.

Being a regular in a television series, for me - if I wanted to be a cop, I woulda went to cop school. If I wanted to be a doctor, I would've gone to medical school. You get trapped in your normal episodic television shows, basically doing the same thing.

I would love to do parts I have never done before, but unfortunately, if you have had success in a particular type of character, the casting agents think, 'Oh! We'll have something exactly like that.' It's very boring.

I don't want to get stuck playing the same character over and over again.

Because I'm now successful, what I'm being offered as an actor is more and more of the same.

If I hadn't left South Africa, I felt I was at risk of being pigeonholed. I looked around and saw actors who, 10 to 15 years into their careers, were still playing stereotypical Afrikaans characters, stereotyped Indian characters. That was not something that I wanted for myself.

As an actor, you don't want to be typecast, because Hollywood is so quick to put you in things that you've succeeded in before.

I must say that when I left 'Doctor Who,' I was filled with... not loathing, but I was incredibly annoyed because I wanted to do more television and films and the only thing that people could ever see me in was a recreation of what I had done.

I was really overwhelmed by the amount of roles that I got offered that were carbon copies of what I did in 'Up in the Air.' I got every offer for every ambitious, unfeeling practically robotic character.

I don't want to only play the leading man for the rest of my career.

I didn't want to spend the rest of my life playing Norma Desmond over and over again.

As a fortysomething actor, you reach a plateau of maturity from which you can really get stuck in.

I took the role of Rochelle in 'Everybody Hates Chris,' and that was it. I was going to play mother roles all the time. Once you do one mother role, it's always a trickle down effect.

The worst thing for an actor is to be stuck in one kind of thing. But if you're not in people's faces all the time, you can lose traction. And that affects the choice of things you get offered.

I don't really want to play Will Poulter for the rest of my life, because that's boring.

After the series 'Roc' ended, every role offer I got was for the wise-cracking, ne'er-do-well brother or boyfriend, and I could have made a very good career doing those characters.

When you've done a show that's as successful as 'Lovejoy' was, it hangs around for a few years, and people know you from it. I escaped the shadow when I stopped 'Lovejoy' by not doing any television for four years.

I'm sure all actors have trouble. The guy who always plays the funny guy, he wants to be taken seriously. And there's the action guy who wants to do serious stuff. Everyone's grass is greener.

In Bombay, people usually tend to cast you in roles that you've played before. Even though they may consider you to be a talented actor, they just think it's 'safer' to have you play the same kind of roles over and over again.

After having been confined to a television series - and it's a luxury job - where you can't play anything but one particular character for nine months out of the year, it will make you insane. It didn't affect me. I got out quick enough.