Actress Challenges Quotes

Where does an actress go after playing Cleopatra's magnificent death? Why didn't Shakespeare write more - and more powerful - roles for mature women?

Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep can play with the boys but there just aren't that many tour-de-force roles out there for women.

When you're in something as successful as 'Transformers,' you can't use it as a sales piece for your ability as an actress because it's all about the special effects.

There's still a massive inequality between the genders. If you look at the trajectory of a male actor's career, there's no hesitation or hiatus. But women after the age of 35 to 40 are rarely placed in the centre of the story.

I think the good thing about my face is it has always been expressive. With Botox that goes - not what you want as an actress.

My looks haven't prevented me from playing prostitutes or people broken by life. But when they need a token blonde with big breasts, that's OK, too. It's part of the game.

Every actress has to face the facts there are younger, more beautiful girls right behind you. Once you've gone beyond the vanity of the business, you'll take on the tough roles.

When you are a pan-Indian actress, you are doing films in different languages and invariably, you end up not signing films in one language or the other for a brief period.

There aren't enough meaty roles for actresses. Also, most actresses aren't ready to take risks.

My actress friends would tell me their horror stories, or say they couldn't get work, and were deemed too old, even though they were established and talented and fit and gorgeous. It was frustrating for them and it was frustrating to hear. Maybe because I was the same age as them and it was already hard enough trying to cross over to the 40s without someone judging your every move.

After 'The Real Thing,' I thought about giving up acting because it's difficult to have a rich life outside your work when you're an actress, a private life that can survive being picked up and put down. That's what I thought, anyway.

I'm just a pack mule. I've played leads and I've played character roles. Any actress in Hollywood will tell you as your age climbs, the leads thin.

Often, as a young actress, you find yourself being the only girl in a room full of men... and one of the reasons why I like 'Grey's Anatomy' is because they have such strong female characters and the women really drive this show.

I'm 40 next year and I'm very well aware that where I am now, it becomes a bit of a wilderness for actresses.

I think male roles are generally much better written. So for actresses, we're always dealing with trying to inject a role with more truth than the writer possibly had in mind.

Cameras love pretty girls and craggy, old character men more than they can take craggy, old character women. But that's what's always happened. Work out how you can fit into it, and make that work. There are never going to be millions of parts for older actresses because there never were.

Near the end, she [Marilyn Monroe] was badly treated by Fox Studios, during the 'Let's Make Love' film shoot in 1960, they threw her off the set because she had a cold.

With acting, the stark reality for women is that it's nearly impossible to get older in an elegant fashion as an actress. Either you're fighting your age, or you're having to own it in a way that feels inelegant, or you're Meryl Streep and you're an angel from God.