Sam Rockwell Quotes

Not all of us are chameleons that can do every different thing. I hope I'm going to be typecast. I will play the girl next door for the rest of my life if I have to. I always kind of feel like I have that in my pocket when I go in a room.

Early in my career, people wanted to pigeonhole me as the bad guy because I'm of Italian-American descent, which they often were when I started out. You have to fight against it. One of the things that helps is the ability to do comedy.

I'm not a star, I'm an actor.

I think you can't be really posh and be an interesting actor. I'm a bit of a posh rough.

In Hollywood, what they last saw you in is what you are. It's hard to break away from that.

I find often in Hollywood there are many people who play themselves really beautifully. And certain parts are not that dissimilar from who you are as a person.

I played a lot of sarcastic, wisecracking characters for a long time, and people would think that was me. And it's very much not me, and then people would think I was being sarcastic when I wasn't: 'Oh, you're making fun of me right now.' And I wasn't!

There are worse things than getting pigeonholed in Hollywood.

Typecasting is really rampant in Hollywood, and because I played a costumed character and did it successfully, it was a real stigma.

They see you as one thing, and you continue to do that. Do you want to play this really awkward, offbeat outsider? Yeah. I can - but I can do other things. It's having people trust that you can do other things, or proving it to them.

You're an actor who's Irish, not an Irish actor. And you shouldn't be limited by your extraction.

The greatest gift an actor can have is not revealing who he is but through the parts he plays. Unfortunately, we live in a world where everyone wants to know everything all the time and I think it takes away part of the fun of acting that we have to go through that all the time.

As an actor, you want people to see you as a whole person, not just a single facet of your emotional spectrum. And whether it's the audience or the industry, you end up getting pigeonholed as one thing. So for people to see I can be funny and stay in shape is a bit of a weight off my shoulders.

I used to have to downplay my sexuality because I wanted to be taken so seriously as a thespian and as an artist and as an actor, so I'd play crack heads and down trotting women and disguise myself, and I think as I've gotten older, I become more comfortable with who I really am and all parts of me knowing that my physical self doesn't diminish me in any way or my talent.

I wander around in corsets in my house all the time. I'm a lot girlier than the roles I play, but I don't believe there's anything wrong in this business for being typecast.

I never thought about being the first black actor to win, even though everybody else talked about that. If I stop to think as a black actor, people will see me differently. If I play as a black actor, people will only see that. I think my key was to perform as an actor, not as a black actor. And after winning the Cesar, I was an actor with a Cesar. there are many more adjectives to describe who I am. I'm not only black.

I would walk into an audition, and they'd say, 'Here comes Clinton Derricks-Carroll's brother.' They could never remember my name.

All I had growing up was like 'Aladdin,' maybe I could be animated - or terrorist roles.

I find often in Hollywood there are many people who play themselves really beautifully. And certain parts are not that dissimilar from who you are as a person. And there are other parts where you would like to think that you have nothing in common with those characters, but you probably do have more than you think.

I figure J-Lo does all these movies and all these videos and all this other stuff...I know I can play tennis and act and do photo shoots and model. I know I can do all that.

I'm 37 and I was told recently I was too old to play the lover of a man who was 55. It was astonishing to me. It made me feel bad, and then it made me feel angry, and then it made me laugh.

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

I feel like I never get to play any version of myself or get to be a normal person.

You can't reinvent yourself for every movie.

You want the actors to disappear into roles and stay under the radar, and that gets harder when someone is known for their actual personality, or who they seem to be.