Colm Meaney Quotes

My definition of a character actor is - they never get the girl.

My label is to play bad guys of Latin origin in American movies. I'm happy with that label. I prefer to play that than to play a city boy. The bad guy is always something very tempting for the audience.

In film roles, I play a lot of heavies and a lot of bad guys, so I tend to be the jokester and the good-time Charlie on the set.

I was never the 'babe,' so I knew I'd never get those big roles. I'd always be the best friend or the quirky sidekick.

I didn't set out to be a villain in film. I'm a character actor, and if my first movie was a comedy, I could have played a geek just as well.

I didn't really look like a character actor, yet those were the roles I loved to play. If you were a character actor who didn't necessarily look like a character actor, you had to play bad guys.

I have played my fair share of bad guys, or at least the nemesis.

I was in love with this character of Ray Krebbs. I wanted the part badly. I had done several Western films in my career at that point and there wasn't much opportunity then to play Western roles on television at that time.

I would rather be called a character actor than a star.

I don't feel like a romantic lead; I guess I feel more like a character actor.

I think every leading man wants to be a character actor, and every character actor wants to be a leading man.

I don't really think there's much difference between a character actor and a leading man besides aesthetics.

I was never really a character actor - I was a leading man who was always cast as a character. I wanted to be Jack Nicholson or Jean Gabin.

I've played heavies for years and years and years. I was bald. I came to Hollywood. I did a play about junk. I was a pusher, so I played pushers for years and years and years. I did war movies and things like that.

I was always a character actor, basically, that sometimes looks like a leading man.

'Desperate Housewives' is an ensemble cast, where I played a tertiary character. I made a lot of great friends, but that show didn't keep me very busy.

I have played nasty people, but not everyone has seen that stuff. Before 'The Office,' I mainly got cast as little toe-rags.

When I was starting to get noticed as an actor in the 1970s for something other than the third cowboy on the right who ended up dying in every movie or episode, Burt Reynolds was the biggest star in the world.

First time I ever played a bad guy. I didn't want to do it. I got stuck in bad guys for 13 years after that.

I've always thought of myself as a character actor, even though I've played some leading-man roles.

The 'boy next door' parts I get offered, I don't find interesting.

M.G.M. never really gave me a break. They loaned me out for leading roles but cast me in programme pictures.

I think every character actor at some stage likes to carry a film. It can be extremely liberating to just come in for a scene or two and do your thing. But I find it frustrating if I'm just doing little bits here and there for too long.

I started here in Australia, playing a lot of roles but never the lead guy in shows here. I always tended to play the rougher guy, the criminal who gets caught or shot by the cops. Or the boyfriend from the wrong side of the tracks.

If you're a 'character actor,' you get hired to play baddies a lot.