Michael Pena Quotes

Of course, I would like to play the guy next door, but nobody's going to hire me for that kind of role.

I find that at almost every press junket I get that comment, "this character's different from what you generally play..." And that's OK! But I think "generally play" stems back to Mr Darcy. I'm fine with it but I tend to find that if it's a departure, which in other people's words it always is, it's always a departure from that.

The 'boy next door' parts I get offered, I don't find interesting.

A lot of young Latino actors have said to me, 'Why can't we get an Oscar? Why can't we be nominated?' And the terrible truth is that if you don't get the right parts, you're not going to be. Are you going to get an Oscar nomination for one of those Judd Apatow movies? Not likely, no matter what nationality you are.

I didn't really look like a character actor, yet those were the roles I loved to play. If you were a character actor who didn't necessarily look like a character actor, you had to play bad guys.

A lot of times, I'll get roles where it's the dumb blonde or the cheerleader, and I just have no interest - and it can be a great movie, it really can - or the mean girl; those things don't intrigue me much.

I knew what my scripts would say before I opened them: 'Enter Conchita.' I played handmaidens, Indian squaws, and Mexican dancers.

I am bored of playing the bechari, behenji type of roles.

I don't usually see my type for on-camera stuff as a series regular. Normally, my type is the janitor, the secretary, the cop, or the nurse.

I'm always looking to play the part that people don't think of me in.

Because of my age, the roles that I'm in doesn't have as much depth as I would like, but that will change. Halle Berry, Angelina Jolie, they play heavy, meaty roles, which are the sort that I want to play...because of what I look like, I play with my looks, which is cool, but I've done it so many times. But one day I would love to play against my looks.

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

My most annoying question is "Hilary, are you ever going to play a pretty girl?"

I think the scariest thing to me is to think that somebody would only associate me with one character and that that's all that I would get to play.

I was often getting hired to play sociopaths and psychopaths and stuff, which is really funny.

My agent had told me that he was going to make me the Janet Gaynor of England—I was going to play all the sweet roles. Whereupon, at the tender age of thirteen, I set upon the path of playing nothing but hookers.

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

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.

Why does every black person in the movies have to play a servant? How about a black person walking up the steps of a courthouse carrying a briefcase?

The thing that I've run up against is that it's always been an either-or proposition, especially in Hollywood. You're either young and glamorous and you're going to get the lead and get the man at the end of the picture, or it's the opposite: you're a character actress, you're not attractive enough for the other role, and so you're playing the friend or the killer or the lesbian or the doctor or whatever.

I like conflict, drama's conflict and if you don't have that in the character it's really not a worthwhile role to play for me.

I just want to play strong characters, whatever that is in.

The first five years of my career, I was Inmate #1, Bad Guy #1 and Mean Guy #1. I had a great career going, until somebody told me that I was typecast. I said, "Well, what's typecast?" And they said, "Well, you're always playing the mean Chicano dude with tattoos." I thought about that and I said, "Wait a minute! I am the mean Chicano dude with tattoos, so somebody is getting it right."

I got to playing villains-I don't know how. I think it's like anything else, in the movies in particular that if you establish yourself as something and you're lucky enough to keep getting hired. You know, there are guys who play the guy who gets the girl, guys who are the best friend of that guy, there's the funny guy, the villain.

I never ever played the lead role in a play, except at school. I guess the industry that we're in, boys that look like me don't get the lead role.