Sarita Choudhury Quotes

I was cast in 'Thor' and I'm cast as a Nordic god. If you know anything about the Nords, they don't look like me but there you go. I think that's a sign of the times for the future. I think we will see multi-level casting. I think we will see that, and I think that's good.

I'm fighting the label of 'Black' actress simply because it's very limiting in people's eyes, especially people who are making movies.

We still have to create things for African American women. Just like Tyler Perry is doing it, we can't wait for things to happen; you have to go and make and create roles and go to people.

I have lots of hopes for black actors in general, whether they be on TV or on stage or in movies, and that is that we move beyond the tokenism of what it means to be black in a particular set of circumstances.

The studios gotta start making more stuff where black folks get quality stuff. But I can't trip about that because I've been making movies for 35 years, and I've played everything from an old lady to a donkey, so I can't be on here talking about, 'They don't give us enough roles' and diversity.

I'm not sure sometimes if it was because Will was gay or it was a sitcom. But that combination does make it hard to become the new lead on the 'Sopranos.'

You can have Asians being leading men that are sex symbols. You can have leading women powering through.

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.

We promote Asian storytelling - not just Asian stories but Asian people in stories with the full spectrum of the human experience. When you say, 'Oh, it's not enough attention on Asians. It's more black and white,' that game becomes like you're playing the discrimination Olympics.

I think the world is ready for people of color to take on more heroic and leading roles, and not always be the sidekick, the nemesis or any sort of stereotype of what a person of color can play typically in a Hollywood picture.

I am tired of our characters being so incomplete. When do we ever save the day in a film? When does a Latino actor get to be the hero?

I'm very happy to have the heritage that I do, but I'm not wanting to be 'the Latino actor.' I just want to be 'an actor.'

A lot of parts written for people of my size, dwarfs, are either foolish idiots or, like, these sages that are all-knowing, and they're very, sort of, come-to-them-for-answers.

I also have a film coming up called Breaking Up, and my part in that was not written for a Latina, and my character is not particularly pretty or sexy or exotic.

The funny thing is I'm not even Latin. I was constantly getting Latin roles, and I was like, I even was nominated for an award, and I was like, 'Let them know at the NAACP, the first white woman. Let them know I'm totally grateful, but I'm not Latin. I can't do that. I play Latin.'

Not only do I not want to be stereotyped as this Asian girl who fights - gee, what a wonder - but also I have more to offer than that.

Of course we've been fighting against stereotypes from Day One at East West. That's the reason we formed: to combat that, and to show we are capable of more than just fulfilling the stereotypes - waiter, laundryman, gardener, martial artist, villain.

The roles for South Asians may have increased by a decent number but there has been a negligible change in the quality of these roles. We still have to fight stereotypes. Fortunately, I've had the priviledge of working with people who look beyond the color of your skin.

At some point we have to stop and say, There's Marlee, not, There's the deaf actress.

I think it was hard for people to cast me as an ethnic, as an Asian American woman.

One of the things I have an allergic reaction to playing, especially as a black actor, is the mandatory kind of best friend/cop/detective type. You will never see me in that movie.

What's so kind of beautiful about the whole thing was that everything that made me not right for all of those hundreds of commercial auditions that I went on and no one ever wanted me for is what made me perfectly right for 'Real Women Have Curves'.

The quote-unquote 'description' of a leading man was once your tall, handsome man with the build of whatever, almost a trophy to some degree. I think now it's about making a leading man what you want a leading man to be. In this day, you can't deny talent. You look at Jonah Hill, you look at Zach Galifianakis, you look at myself.

The lack of diversity, specifically in genre films and the superheroes our kids grow up watching and emulating, they can't really identify with. When you see the same thing, over and over again, and it seems not to speak of you and your heritage and your culture, it leaves you out of this world a little bit.

I believe I can do it, but one of the reasons I don't really get into the debate is people keep talking about a black James Bond: how a black man should play him.