Matthew Perry Quotes

Being an actress, I want to play people that are not like me or the characters I've previously played. It's easier to get roles if you play a certain type of character but I don't want to do that.

I said, I'm on this TV show and I love doing it, but I don't want to be known always as the silly 'Scrubs' guy... So part of me was like, You know what? Life's short. Let's go for it.

I was not only typecast as a Russian, but I was typecast as Yakov Smirnoff. This is understandable, and I was very happy to get the roles, but it would be nice to be in a movie where I could be someone else.

I had been making films for almost ten years, and the head men at RKO thought of me only in terms of musicals. I found no fault with that, except I just couldn't stand being typed or pigeonholed as only a singing and dancing girl. I wanted to extend my range.

I had a fear that I'd be typecast, but I don't really have that fear anymore.

I think any actor in their right mind is afraid of getting pigeonholed.

You don't pass up roles that give you the opportunity to stretch and to grow.

There's this little box that African-American actors have to work in, in the first place, and I was able to rise above that box. I could have done a bunch of movies where I stayed as the Axel Foley or Reggie Hammond persona. But I didn't want to be doing the same thing all the time. Every now and then, you crash and burn, but that's part of it.

I've definitely been typecast, but I have time to do other things and I was glad to have the chances I did.

It's about pursuing it rather than waiting to see what comes along. That's partly because I found myself getting typecast, as everyone does unless they pursue roles that are very different from what they've done before.

An actor is like a piece of clay: you just keep moulding me. Even people who work with you every day want to put you in a little box.

I actually grew up hearing this a lot: 'If you're an actor, you can only be an actor, and you have to just do that.' But in order to be a good actor, you have to draw on life experiences. To only concentrate on acting, you're cutting yourself off.

Every actor wants to break out of the box that they put you in and that's where I'm heading, out of the box as fast as I can.

I don't like being pigeonholed at all. It stemmed from after 'Mandy Lane': I was being offered all these horror movies. I love horror movies, but when I dreamed of being a director, it was always doing all sorts of things.

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 know that when you do similar kind of films, one after the other, people tend to stereotype and say, 'She is only good at this.'

As an actor, it's good to try to do new things, I think.

It's not fun for an actor to be pigeonholed in any way.

No actor wants to be typecast, so you always want to make good, careful choices.

I sort of went 'Oh, great. I'm getting these great roles and I love doing them, but I'm going to be Anthony Perkins for the rest of my life.'

It's kind of like OK, I want to be a singer. And I felt if I would have stayed with the 'Osbournes' and done the whole Osbourne thing... I would have been typecasted right away before I had a chance to experience other things.

Doing 'SunTrap' after 'The Chase' is dipping into something different. That's the whole basis of what I wanted to do with my career. I didn't want to do the same thing all the time.

In Hollywood, you tend to get pigeonholed to certain genres, and then when you try to do something different, it's not always so easy. Obviously, you don't want to keep repeating yourself, all the time. So, it's a constant struggle for every filmmaker and actor to find something that you can really feel passionate about. It's a profession like anything else.

My agent Sue realised after 'Cold Feet' that I could have spent the rest of my life doing similar roles. So she was instrumental in moving me away from that.

My career seems to have worked out OK, especially since I turned 40. I've always had a character part, mind you - I've never played the princess. But if you're used to doing that, it must be soul-destroying to hit 40 and suddenly find there's nothing for you to do.