Daisy Shah Quotes

Yes. Otherwise I could have done a lot of Hollywood movies. After Crouching Tiger I got a lot of offers, but I turned them down because they were all victim roles - poor girls sold to America to be a wife or whatever. I know I have the ability to go deeper, to take on more original roles than that.

I do try and stay away from the stereotype and getting typecast.

I've always wanted to explore different types of roles and prove to others that Divyanka is not all about being a timid dulhan.

Being typecast is the enemy of any actor, so if you can try to do something that flips on the head peoples' ideas of who you are or what you can do, that's my biggest aim.

I was looking to show people I could act. I was looking for something that would take me away from the whole hunk riding off into the sunset thing that people wanted me to play after Brown Sugar.

It is challenging and hard not to accept all stereotypical roles that get thrown your way. For me, I've been really, really lucky because I have been able to play a lot of different parts.

I love a challenge. And I love defying limitation, gender stereotypes, and people's expectations of me as an actress.

Hollywood typecast me as the secretary. I could have worked as the quirky secretary for the rest of my life, but I decided not to do that.

I'd taken the bull by the horns by liberating myself and creating a career. It took guts - it was scary and chancy - but they discounted me as empty-headed: some little piece of fluff without any brain that happened to come along.

We cannot let ourselves be infantalized. We cannot let ourselves be stereotyped.

I never felt that I was typecast, but I was concerned about it. I certainly made an effort to take as many parts in theater and film that resisted that. If you only learn how to act a certain kind of role, it is very difficult to grow as an actor.

When I signed 'Kaaka Muttai,' a lot of directors told me that I shouldn't be doing the role of a mother so early in my career. But I went ahead, as I aspire to do challenging roles.

I like doing things that people wouldn't necessarily think I can do.

Yes, there is an image people have of me, that I did only sweet boy roles. With 'Ek Villain,' I got the opportunity to break out from this image. It is a way of answering my critics, to tell them I am here to perform and not just for glamour.

I was doing well for myself and wanted to play different roles and not just be happy portraying glamorous characters.

I always felt that, as an actor, I should play a variety of roles rather than just sticking to one kind & getting typecast.

After Princess Diaries, I was labeled a good girl, and for the first eight years of my career I had to fight to get any other kind of role. But I like fighting for a job, actually. Once you get it, you feel like you've emerged victorious from the scrap and you're like, "OK, this one's mine. Did it. Done."

It ain't easy to break out of a mold, but if you do your work, people will ultimately see what you're capable of. Too often, people find it easier to make assumptions and stick with what they believe. They put you in a place and it makes their job easier. The good people constantly search for something different.

After 'Homeland,' I was offered a lot of very authoritarian, square, angry boss types, but I wanted to do something different. Casting directors are surprised when they look at my CV and see all the work I've done, from Shakespeare to playing Nelson Mandela.

Hire me for the next picture. I don't have to just play down-and-out trailer trash and mean, old, wicked, old nuns. I could play a princess or a queen. That's all I wanted to do. Because campaigning does go on. It's a part of selling the film.

I don't relate to people that look like me. I find it deeply unsatisfying to play a version of myself. It was something I had to figure out really early on, when I was at RADA, because I was being cast, over and over again, as the young, virginal thing. When I left RADA, I was on an absolute mission to never wear make-up.

I'm trying to break the stereotypical role now of the Theo-type character because, in my post-'Cosby' life, as I call it, I don't want to be known as just the kind of guy who can play a Theo Huxtable-type character. I want to be known as being able to do more things, being able to stretch.

For me as an actor, I oftentimes wish producers would take a chance and cast me against type, and they often don't, so when you get a chance, you do it. At least I do.

After doing 'War and Peace,' I suddenly got lots of seductress roles. It's easy to put people into a category after you've seen them in one thing that you feel fits with them. But I'm trying to make a conscious decision to do different things.

I think, before 'Watchmen,' I was the guy from 'Grey's Anatomy' who's a pretty good guy, a pretty charming sweet guy, and so as an actor, I really wanted to do something as far from that as I could.