Nicolas Cage Quotes

I'm rebelling against being handed a career, like, 'You're the next this; you're the next that.' I'm not the next anything, I'm the first me. I can't be myself, I can't just be Idris Elba. But that's just the nature of the business.

I've never been like Angelina Jolie, who at one time was spewing out this prototype Bad Girl stuff for people to consume. I've never boxed myself in that way. People can create boxes for me by all means, but it doesn't mean I'm going to step inside them.

After I tasted success with erotic thrillers, a time came when I was being offered only films belonging to that genre. The industry loves repeating a success formula, and the audience had formed a certain image of mine in their minds.

I don't think an actor ever wants to establish an image. That certainly hurt me, and yet that is also what made me successful and eventually able to do more challenging roles.

I've been told if you're an actress you can't sing, if you're a dancer you can't act, you can't do theatre and be respected if you've done a TV soap, you can't have a No. 1 record. All these different things they've told me I can't do, but I wanted to do them, so I've done them.

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

I did art; I made furniture. I didn't want to be a cliche - the Beatle's son who became a musician.

Don't let the world define you. In the world of acting, and I think in any profession, really, people are really eager to put you in a box and categorize you as one particular thing.

I don't want to just be in the normal kind of teen movie.

I could have been on a path that led to different, more traditional teen romance, and 'Nip/Tuck' shook me loose from any generalization I might have been forced into. It helped me understand I wanted to take on things that were edgier, more challenging and riskier.

When I decided to become an actress, I think I let some people down. It was a kind of rebellion.

I chose to stylize 'Among Friends' and add a dark comedic element because I didn't want to get pigeonholed as a genre director. I have a pretty dark sense of humor and knew that in order to get distribution, I had to do something in the genre for my first time out.

I love casting against type and doing things you wouldn't expect, because I think you get more interesting performances that way. Hollywood loves to pigeonhole people, and there's nothing an actor loves more than to do something different.

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 was playing pretty boys and these angelic roles like Nicholas Nickleby and all that stuff. And I was like, 'What am I doing? This isn't who I am, as a man or an artist.' I had to overcome people's belief that I was too pretty to be a badass.

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.

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 the release of 'Ashta Chemm,' several producers and directors came with similar roles in their films. But I doesn't want to do stereo type roles and do something different for each film, and refused them.

I'd say my heart is more in independents, but sometimes these major films come along that are pretty good, you know?

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.'

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 would love to do regional cinema, provided the role is exciting enough and artistically challenging.

I love that I am being offered films but I just couldn't do the 'cotton sari-strong woman' role again. As an artiste, there is nothing more I can offer there.

One of the cool things about 'Patti Cake$' is that it is about someone that is against stereotype.

I don't have any limitations that I only want to do serious films. I am trying to break that image but not very consciously.