Ian McShane Quotes

If you are a successful actor, which is what I am, then you tend to get labelled very quickly and easily.

I was Pee-wee Herman for so many years that it wasn't really a question that I didn't want to do other things.

Once I started working as a professional actor, it was like, 'Bye-bye waiting tables, bye-bye bartending, bye-bye all the cliched jobs actors do.' But after a year of not getting work, there's this really difficult conflict, like, 'Do I have to go back to being a waiter when people recognize me from a show?'

There's more to me, you know? I'm not Macaulay Culkin, 'Home Alone' kid. I'm Macaulay Culkin... actor.

I've got quite a big fan base, and people like to see you do the same thing - that's why you get offered the same roles.

I think if I was in over 250 films, the world would get pretty sick of me. I would probably never get put in anything ever again.

Yeah, I think Michael has had to deal with that label of being Michael Caine for a long time.

I think you can find yourself on one of these shows for a long period of time and think that all you'll ever be able to do is that character. Certainly people think of you that way.

I get offered a lot of parts where I want to say, 'Why don't you just hire a model? Don't hire an actor.' I'm trying to convince people I'm a real actor, not some mannequin.

As an actor, you don't want to be typecast, because Hollywood is so quick to put you in things that you've succeeded in before.

To become a star is the beginning of the end. I don't really want to be saddled with a screen persona.

I had come to the point when I realized it was unlikely that my film career was going to move beyond a certain level of role. And I was - because I had graphic instances of it - handicapped by the success of Star Trek. A director would say, 'I don't want Jean-Luc Picard in my movie' - and this was compounded by X-Men as well.

I must say that when I left 'Doctor Who,' I was filled with... not loathing, but I was incredibly annoyed because I wanted to do more television and films and the only thing that people could ever see me in was a recreation of what I had done.

Well, when you do something like Rocky which is indefinable somehow, it always becomes difficult to lose that.

I don't want to only play the leading man for the rest of my career.

With all the movies I've done, I still get recognized from my episode of 'Law & Order' more than anything else. It never fails.

No one ever comes up to me and says, 'Hey man, I loved your work in 'Road Trip.' They say, 'Are you that guy?' Like, they have no idea. 'Were you in 'American Pie 2?'

I was called Matt Dillon's brother my whole career basically until 'Entourage' broke me free of that and now people call me Johnny Drama instead.

I took the role of Rochelle in 'Everybody Hates Chris,' and that was it. I was going to play mother roles all the time. Once you do one mother role, it's always a trickle down effect.

I don't think of myself as a character actress - that's become a phrase which means you've had it.

Now that people know who I am, I get offered plays here and there. It was so much easier to do it when nobody knew who I was. I can't even imagine that somebody would come and pay money just to come and see me now.

In the meantime, I just have to create those realistic goals about the fact that I don't have a ton of options as an actor who's been on a science fiction show for 8 years.

Celebrity is death - celebrity - that's the worst thing that can happen to an actor.

The worst thing for an actor is to be stuck in one kind of thing. But if you're not in people's faces all the time, you can lose traction. And that affects the choice of things you get offered.

I don't really want to play Will Poulter for the rest of my life, because that's boring.