Whit Stillman Quotes

I think I've been in situations where they looked at me and just see some rich white guy - they don't see me at all.

Maybe at some level, even at an early age, without ever being aware of it, I was reacting to something. To people judging me based on how I looked instead of what I could do.

I used to be offended when people would compare me to Erykah Badu. Because I'm black, thick, and have large lips? There's nothing similar about us whatsoever, and I felt very disrespected by the fact that people needed to pigeonhole me. I wasn't even raised on Erykah Badu!

I had a casting director tell me to be blacker.

I'm Colombian. My family all have different complexions; some are people of color. I've been called every name by white people, been mocked for speaking in Spanish by white people.

In Australia, there just weren't strong roles for actors of colour. I was often being asked to turn up for commercials with a ghetto blaster on my shoulder. I thought, 'Are we in the '60s?'

If a foreign country doesn't look like a middle-class suburb of Dallas or Detroit, then obviously the natives must be dangerous as well as badly dressed.

I'm Italian. I wouldn't know how to play a Jew.

At my advanced age, I know I am not an anti-Semite, not even vaguely or remotely, but others would seem to know better, as false accusers always do.

I had a white senator call me a rag head, and I had an African-American legislator call me a conservative with a tan.

Every now and then I'm in a situation where someone doesn't recognize me, and I experience racism. Things like not being buzzed into a store or sitting in first class on a plane and having someone ask to see my ticket four times.

People would write me hate letters. How dare I try to represent Hispanics when I was so white? I tried to make them see it was racism.

I'd be stupid not to take into consideration that there are certain things people will not consider me for because my name is Lopez. And I know I can do any kind of role. I don't want anybody to say, Oh, she can't pull this off. So those are barriers that you have to overcome.

Ageism is as odious as racism and sexism.

I asked him if he ever hung out with black guys in high school and he said, 'Well, no. They always had these angry looks on their faces. Who wouldn't look ticked off having to deal with nitwits like him?

Sometimes stereotyping happens not because of any nefarious reasons but rather because people don't know who you are or where you come from, so they go for the broad strokes about you, your culture, your faith, all that.

I think I'm going to be stereotyped forever, but I'm not scared of being stereotyped.

When they talk to me, people say, 'I didn't expect you to be how you are.'

What white woman, however lonely, was ever captive or insulted by me? Yet they say I am a bad Indian.

People look at me, and they go, 'You're white, you're smart, you must have went to college. You must have grown up with money.'

You know, sometimes an interviewer will look at me and say - you're bright! They're actually surprised I might be bright.

There are a lot of people who like to think they don't have prejudices and that they're open people, and yet, we all have that in ourselves, oftentimes against people of our own race or our own gender or whatever.

People look at you, and they've got just the perfect little box for you, the perfect category. Call you a redneck. Call you a hillbilly. Like those were insults.

I actually spoke to one of the heads of a studio, and he said I confuse middle America. Basically, when they see a black person, they see athlete, they see rapper, or they see criminal or something like that. And then when they hear a British accent, they hear posh, so they hear lawyer or doctor.

All my life, I faced sexism and racism and then, when I hit 40, ageism.