M. C. Gainey Quotes

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 I don't do this film. I'll be acting in corsets for the next 20 years.

Over the years, I've had a few roles where I've had to take my shirt off. I've kind of been the 'shirt-off' guy.

Of course, I would like to play the guy next door, but nobody's going to hire me for that kind of role.

I've always had this American-pie face that would get work in commercials... I'd say things like, 'Hi, Marge, how's your laundry?' and 'Hi, I'm a real nice Georgia peach.' Sometimes this work is one step above being a cocktail waitress.

After The Wizard Of Oz I was typecast as a lion, and there aren't all that many parts for lions.

For years after 'The Last Waltz,' I got all kinds of silly movie offers - or, maybe, not silly, but parts that are not my calling... lots of offers to play some wonderful boyfriend.

I have about as much control over how I look as the guy who's short and looks more like a character actor - we both have the same drive to be actors and we both have the same drive to assume these different characters, it's just harder for me to get the chance because they look at me and say, 'Oh, he's this type,' and they stamp me.

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

I knew I wasn't going to be any great shakes as an actor - the way I looked, I would play the soda jerk or the friend of a friend.

When I was younger, you get pigeonholed in parts, which is understandable.

A lot of times, I'll get roles where it's the dumb blonde or the cheerleader, and I just have no interest - and it can be a great movie, it really can - or the mean girl; those things don't intrigue me much.

I have never really ever gotten to play the girl next door.

For years, they cast me in these dumb straight roles of businessmen in three-piece suits.

The majority of the roles I've played are women who have been either impoverished or subjugated in some way. So while I've been fortunate enough to have success because these roles exist, they are stereotypical roles.

We often get pigeon-holed as a tough guy, or whatever else. I've been pigeon-holed as a heavy and serious, and almost a baddy, but not quite a baddy, over the years of my work in television, particularly.

Like every actor, you get notorious for maybe one role and then get offered a lot of similar roles.

In films, maybe I was lost or typecast.

Honestly, I had a very realistic, probably pessimistic outlook at the beginning of my career post-graduation of drama school. In general, I would see black women, usually older, playing a certain archetype on procedural shows. I thought, 'Okay, that's what I have to look forward to.'

It's often disappointing when you're sent scripts, and you see why you were sent it; they want you to repeat the same thing you've done before.

I don't have the body or the face for romantic comedies, so I've never been offered those. The challenge is that a lot of people see you only as your last character, so you're constantly competing with whatever your last movie was.

It never occurred to me that I’d be typecast, although I was. And I never thought of the role as a commercial product, because I was… well, I was playing this slightly messianic alien. He isn’t violent, he doesn’t get his leg over the girl, he doesn’t steal, and he’s rather wry, and adorable, and mysterious. He’s lived for 900 years or something. He lives the life of the old patriarchs of the Old Testament. That’s not commercial. He’s special.

Recently I've been looking for something new. The past few projects I've worked on, I keep getting cast as the asshole. I promise I'm a nice guy and not the asshole that everyone keeps seeing.

Well, I was always cast as an artistic homicidal maniac. But at least I was artistic!

As actors, the great thing about our career is we get to change from role to role. I don't want to be known as "put him in the movie because he has nice abs" guy.